Falling Short
by ectograsp
Summary: After the events of the Avengers, Natasha's having trouble remembering why she ever thought it was a good idea to get caught up in Clint's life. But when he appears to have been killed in battle - for her - she realizes everything he always wished she'd be brave enough to see.
1. Prologue Part 1

**Prologue**

_He's been following her for nine days. Gave himself that long because when the mark's a professional themselves you've got to work out what the perfect moment is, when their guard will be down enough, if ever._

_It turns out that Natalia Romanova never really lets her guard down. _

_She's pretending to be a high class callgirl, all big blonde curls and bee-stung lips and wandering hands on the bodies of various desperate and horny Brazilian men; she pretends to have a penchant for the man she's following, a skinny guy who'd have no shot with her in reality but has too big an ego to recognize the fact. He's a murderer, a thief, known for having an interest in the sex slave industry - not a virtuous man by any means. He's actually Clint's second mark and under other circumstances he'd let the other party do the job just to keep more blood off his hands, but he has to get in first because the second Romanova's finished she's sure to vanish into the night so the upper hand is essential. He's waiting for his moment._

_He's read her file. She's a dangerous woman - anyone else that age and you'd have to call her a girl, but the things she's done defy the innocence of the word. She's killed a lot of US allies and a few good men in her time. Red Room, raised as an assassin, earned the name Black Widow because a mere look strikes fear into the hearts of men who understand what she is, and her bite is deadly._

_Lucky for this guy, Mano de Silva, she hasn't gone in for the kill yet. He assumes there are things she needs to know first, and this is what gives Clint the time to get to know her. From a distance, where he sees best._

_She doesn't give away much, but this is what he knows. Her shoes give her blisters; when she sits down to dinner she lifts her heels out of them for relief. This may delay her in a chase, if only for the second or so it takes her to kick them off. She rolls her neck sometimes when her companion's not around and she can drop the poised act; she's tense and her head might be the best target if it comes down to hand to hand combat. She likes to go out on the balcony and smoke at three thirty in the morning, because that's when every other person in the hotel is dead asleep and for ten minutes, she can breathe air that isn't filled with the stench of strange men's breath; she can be herself again, and every night when she blows smoke from her lips for the first time the sheer relief on her face makes him ache. This might be his opportunity; that split second where she lets herself close her eyes and breathe. He'd feel like shit for taking her out like that, but considering her reputation he may have to take his luck where it comes._

_She hasn't given any guy a single genuine smile, though it's certainly convincing enough – but he's seen the real thing, when she watched a crabby middle aged woman who'd reduced her maid to tears trip face first into a puddle, and her nose crinkles in a way that's not sexy like she's trying (and succeeding) to portray but almost sweet, and a little bit wicked. _

_He has no use for that information._

_But he can't help but notice her sense of humour. When she's with her conquests, she's a brilliant actress but he's looking for the cracks in her façade and he sees the deadness in her eyes. But every now and then, he'll see the smile, the real one. Like when she's sitting at the bar and the man mixing her drink sees his wife and daughter at the front door and gets so excited he spills her cocktail – the character she's playing narrows her eyes and huffs in annoyance but as the man scrambles to fix her a new one, Clint sees her smile. Or when de Silva bends over and his pants fall three inches past decency – he felt a wave of solidarity when she had to bite her lip to keep from laughing._

_Pointless facts, but true nonetheless. _

_On the ninth day, he goes over what he knows and decides that tonight will be the night. He comes up with a plan – and he tells de Silva. He tells himself this is the best way to do it – he pretends it's not that he just doesn't want to kill her in that peaceful moment on the balcony._

_For a guy brought up with a bloodstained spoon in his mouth, de Silva is ridiculously outraged that he's got an assassin after him. He swallows Clint's cock and bull story about a secret sect of the US government wanting a favour from the de Silva family in their ledger and agrees to go along with whatever tactic Romanova implements to lure him to a warehouse she's been sneaking away to look at over the past few days – Clint's expecting her to trap de Silva there at some point soon and he makes sure the moron will take the bait. He'll be watching, and then he'll wait for her there and well, then he'll do what he has to._

_The truth is, he doesn't want to do it. He likes her. He wishes he didn't because he knows she's done some fucking awful things, and because it's his job to take her out and no matter what he feels, he'll do his job. But it seems like a fucking tragedy to kill someone who has dead eyes and still manages to laugh._

_It's such a waste. Sure she's beautiful, and that's worth something in an ugly world, but he's got this feeling that in another life, if she hadn't seen so much and done so much and been so thoroughly screwed up as a child, her eyes would not be dead and the glimpses of spirit he sees in her would be worth more than just a weapon to do the work of bad men who have taken away any other chance she had at life._

_~(*A*)~_

_It's three thirty in the morning and she's running through an alleyway in Rio de Janeiro in a cocktail dress and blonde wig, clutching a hideous gold necklace, bare feet flying across cobblestones as a furious man - the younger brother of a Brazilian crime family, mass murderer and son of the woman to whom her bounty belongs - chases her. It's pitch black but she's planned for this and she knows every step, every contingency; she could do this with her eyes closed. She makes sure to inject a little panic and urgency in her breathing to make him think he's frightening her; she measures her steps carefully, letting him catch up to her at a believable pace. By the time she gets to the warehouse, he's close enough that she can smell the stale rum on his breath and hear the wheezing of his lungs, and she gives a scream of convincing terror to make him think she's as desperate as he wants her to be. She forces herself not to let her eyes stray towards the third storey window, and she slips into the building but lets him leap in after her before the door clicks shut. This is when she drops the scared little girl act and turns around to face him – Mano de Silva._

_He's a small guy, sweaty and out of shape, and despite the handgun in his jacket, or perhaps because of it, she's not afraid of him. Besides, she could have it out of his hands and buried in his temple in less than three seconds if she felt so inclined. He's staring at her with slitted eyes, like he's trying to work something out, and then they go wide in comprehension. 'You –you're that whore!'_

_She's posing as a callgirl and pretended to be interested in him so she could get a handle on his personality, work out an angle to get him alone. He'd been extremely nice to her then, buying her drinks and running his spindly hands through her fake blonde curls. But a man's true colours always come out when he doesn't have the possibility of sex dangling in front of his nose. Like a scrap of meat to a dog._

'_I am many things,' she says coolly, 'and a whore is only one of them.'_

_She's had to be, sometimes. Men are pathetic. From the most powerful criminal operations to the scummiest street rings, there's always a weak link in the chain who'll give her information or an opportunity for a chance to get their rocks off with a pretty girl._

_She doesn't say this for his benefit though, but for the benefit of the man in the third storey, who she knows can hear everything they're saying. Just because she's a whore doesn't mean he should forget everything else she is, and if he's going to be the one to take her out she wants him to know exactly who she is. She's killed enough people to know that there's a kind of peace in your murderer at least understanding something about the life they're responsible for ending. _

_She imagines she can hear the rough slide of an arrow notching itself into place, but she knows it's not time yet._

'_Ah, but that I know,' hisses de Silva, and he straightens up in front of her, puffing out his chest; a smirk grows onto his face as he prepares to tell her something he's sure will take her by surprise. He may not have known her in the club, but he knows who he was expecting tonight – though he thinks she doesn't know that. 'Black Widow.'_

_There's a beat as his words hang in the air and he waits, certain she's about to drop her jaw or sink to her knees in defeat. She raises an eyebrow, unimpressed. A coil of anticipation begins to come loose and billow in her chest; this is what she's been waiting for, for the past nine days of pretending and averting her eyes from the man she's not supposed to see, who is always watching her. 'Congratulations, Mr de Silva,' she says courteously. Calmly. 'Despite your general ineptitude as a covert criminal, you've clearly got the intelligence required to listen to everything the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division of the US government tells you.'_

_This time a jaw does drop, but it's not hers – he splutters in astonishment, and actually stumbles back in surprise and – she notes with satisfaction – no little amount of fear that she's not as wrong-footed as he'd supposed._

_Meanwhile, she hears a rush of air in the rafters above her and knows that her friend from the third storey has been brought down by her words._

'_You know?' gasps de Silva._

'_That he approached you and told you that I had been hired by your enemies to kill you?' she asks. 'That he knew I'd planned originally to trap you in this warehouse, torture the de Silvas' plans for the Versailles summit out of you and put a bullet through your skull? That he enlisted you to pretend to go along with my little trick – stealing your mother's necklace,' she holds up the gaudy gold chain and lets it slip through her fingers to the ground with a clatter, 'and pretending to let you chase me, so he could ambush me here?'_

_At last she does what she's been itching to do since she got here; she looks up, and sees the man whose face she is not supposed to know staring at her from the dark. She's an expert in eyes, because she trades in a world where people communicate with little else and are able to hide every other form of expression. His have become a constant in her life over the past nine days, though she's never looked straight into them before; only felt his gaze, following her through hotel lobbies, club dance floors, restaurant patios, crowded streets, quiet streets, beaches. She's a spy and she's known from a young age how to sense another spy. It's the weirdest feeling, and it's different every time. When she was young, still in training, she'd be sent out with an older KGB guy to supervise her and it always felt like an animal nipping at her heels; a constant reminder that if she faltered, hesitated for even a second, she'd have a bullet in her spine from an organization which just didn't have the patience for weakness. She's been followed by gangs, and that's like the sound of a gun being loaded when she doesn't know where it is; the possibility of a bullet coming from any direction._

_She doesn't operate like that; she waits for a perfect moment and so does this guy, whose eyes – grey and almost gentle, but sharp as cut glass, she can see now – feel like a hand on the back of her neck. She doesn't really like being touched but metaphorically, the feeling is different. She's been watched before, but never like this: never so constant and unwavering, and for the first few days it unnerved her, like being in the presence of someone who never blinks, but she's gotten used to him. She knows it's his job to kill her but she doesn't hate him for it. She's glad that since she's going to die, the man who's going to kill her is someone a bit like her: careful, calm, considered. The kind of person who doesn't kill for fun but because it has to be done. He'll make it fast._

_He doesn't betray any surprise at her knowledge. Just looks at her, and she's kind of surprised that he's not sick of it by now. She smiles up at him and lifts a hand in greeting. _

_Slowly, he unfolds himself from his crouch in the rafters and then drops smoothly to the ground, landing straight in front of her._

_This is not what she was expecting. This man, she expected to kill from a distance._

_It's the first time she's gotten a good look at him. He's handsome, not in an obvious or flashy way but there's those intense eyes and the nice lines of his face and a kind of radiating calmness that she can't help but like. And he's got the body of a soldier; that, she's always respected. He just keeps looking at her._

'_Uh – listen, McKenzie,' de Silva says anxiously, stepping towards them, 'y-you said this was a trap, you said she - she had no idea what was –'_

'_Your job is done, de Silva,' the man says flatly, never tearing his eyes from Natasha's. 'You can leave.'_

_De Silva's relief is palpable, and he practically bows._

'_Great,' he breathes, and his watery eyes turn to Natasha, filled with a combination of fear and contempt. 'Make – make sure the bitch suffers –'_

'_Now,' the man growls, and Natasha would laugh if she wasn't so well trained because de Silva almost falls on his face, he turns around so fast. He runs gracelessly to the door, and his hand is almost on the knob when the man suddenly swings his bow up and with lightning speed, sends an arrow straight through the back of de Silva's head. He falls like a marionette whose strings have been cut and lands with his face on the ground, blood growing in a puddle around him._

_Natasha had a feeling that she and the archer shared a mark, so this doesn't really surprise her. But she expects him to turn on her next and when he lowers the bow to his side again, that does._

'_So,' he says, almost conversationally, 'you knew. I've got to admit, I'm surprised. I knew you were good but you didn't see me this whole time –'_

'_Of course I saw you. I saw you for the first time at three pm last Thursday, in the courtyard outside the Papagaio Hotel.'_

_This surprises him, she can tell – he's not used to being discovered, especially that early in the game, and he's certainly not used to people concealing it from him. It's obvious he doesn't like it. His gaze seems to intensify._

'_So why did you stick around? You knew I was going to kill de Silva. Why bother with the pretence, why let me get a chance to take you out? You could be back in Russia by now.'_

'_I don't want to be back in Russia. I was paid to make sure de Silva wound up dead by the 7__th__. It doesn't matter to me or my client how that occurs. And when I figured out I was a mark too, I guess I wanted to stick around… see what you'd do.' She tilts her head. 'And look – you got me.'_

'_You let me get you,' he corrects her. He gives a humourless laugh. 'Not sure why.'_

_She realizes she's not behaving the way he expected her to; she's not fighting him, she's not even trying to get away, and she knows that he's being smart by trying to make sure she hasn't got some trick happening before he puts her down. But she wishes he'd just get it over with and stop questioning his good luck. She's here; she's wide open. Why won't he just take the shot?_

_~(*A*)~_

_What the hell is she doing?_

_Nothing is happening the way he expected it to. She knew about the trap, that was bizarre enough, but she's known he was watching her this whole time? Her eyes never went to him once – he never even considered that she knew he was there, because not only has that never, ever happened before, he knows enough about psychology to know that it's close to impossible to resist looking at someone who is watching you – let alone for nine days straight – and he's always counted on that to let him know if his cover was blown._

_It's never happened before._

_So she knew. And maybe she was curious about the weird guy with the bow and arrow who was following her and stuck around just to 'see what he would do', but that doesn't explain why she seems to want him to put an arrow between her eyes. _

_Up close, she looks even younger than from a distance and it's not making his job any easier. Part of the reason he likes to put a good forty foot drop between him and his targets is that the space makes it a lot easier to think of them as targets in the first place. Up close, her dead eyes are a little less dead and he realizes that she may be practically inviting death right now, but it's not that she doesn't want to live – she just doesn't see a way to live any life but the miserable one she's been dealt, and even death is better than that. _

_He gets her. Which is fucking strange for him because usually he looks at a target and thinks they deserve what's coming to them for all the pain and suffering they dole out. This girl is probably his most dangerous mark yet and despite the goddamn professionalism he prides himself on, what he feels for her is understanding._

_But she's looking at him like she thinks he's completely retarded._

'_Are you trying to get me to kill you?' he asks bluntly._

'_Isn't that what you're here to do?' she asks slowly, her voice clear and almost tentative, like a nurse trying to reintroduce an amnesia patient to the unpleasant details of his life. But more mocking._

'_Yeah… but you're practically begging for it, Romanova.'_

_Her eyes narrow and for some reason he feels triumphant; she's still got pride – if he had to guess, he'd say that's what's stopped her killing herself since she cares so little for her life; suicide isn't very honourable but being assassinated has its merits. The expression on her face tells him she's starting to worry; she'd counted on dying today and she doesn't understand why it hasn't happened yet. Neither does he, really. But…_

'_I don't beg, McKenzie.'_

'_Waiting for it, then,' he corrects himself. He hesitates. He'd given de Silva a fake name for obvious reasons, but something makes him want to give this girl the truth. 'And… my name's Barton.'_

_She inhales sharply and he knows it's been a long time for her, since someone who knew her real name gave her theirs. He sees her lips shape silently around the consonants of his name and is glad to have given her that, glad to realize that in the past nine days of him watching and her feeling him – letting him, really – watch her, she has come to be curious about him. She cares what his name is._

'_And it matters to you how I feel about my own death, Barton?' she asks angrily. She's asking to be set free. 'How the fuck are you a master assassin?'_

'_Usually it doesn't. But I've never killed someone who wanted to die before.'_

_It's as he says it that he realizes this is it; this is what makes her so different from the other people he's killed. There were some whose lives he had woven himself into before taking them out and their faces always had absolute betrayal on them, whether they knew or liked him at all – just because they felt life itself had betrayed them by letting him get close. Some got a glimpse of him bow in hand before he released an arrow and the sheer power of their desire to live rushed to their faces like blood. Because they were bad people, responsible for the murders of others, this usually felt like justice. And there were those who never saw him at all; shot down mid step, mid sentence, or mid breath, which was almost the most concentrated form of the will to live; actually living. _

_Never before had a girl stood in front of him wanting nothing more than for him to kill her. And he thinks it's because she recognized how awful she had become; not just a child assassin anymore, not a member of the KGB, because she'd run away from them a year ago, but a mercenary. She killed for cash and she didn't want to live and it's the fact that she still has the goodness in her to feel suicidal that makes him think there's hope for her yet._

'_Are you saying you're not going to?' she asks disbelievingly. And he sees the despair in her eyes._

_He takes a deep breath. Imagines the look on Coulson's face – shit, the look on Fury's face – and makes a choice. He kills for them – they owe it to him to trust him when he makes a different call._

'_I don't think so.'_

'_Why?' she cries, and her voice cracks. _

'_I was sent to kill you because you're a threat to SHIELD's interests and the interests of my country. Or you were. But if you're looking to die that means you're done with that life… maybe I can get you a new one.'_

_She looks like she's been slapped in the face, and a split second later rage sets in and he realizes that in offering her salvation he has confirmed that he doesn't want to kill her today, and in her mind that's robbing her of the salvation she had planned. He doesn't even have time to blink before her foot is flying towards his head in a roundhouse kick – staggering from surprise, he brings his bow up and just manages to catch her ankle, shoving her away. She _

'_I don't want to fight you but I will if I have to,' he warns her, and she snarls, running towards him, and he realizes that's exactly what she wants, to force him – he takes a flying leap and grabs one of the low hung rafters in his hands, swinging himself up into them. He gapes as she just keeps running, shaking her blonde wig free, until she hits the wall, runs several more feet up the vertical surface and flips herself up onto a rafter a small distance away from him, crouched steadily and with her eyes still glittering with anger. Long, auburn red curls frame her face._

_This is why she's called the Black Widow._

_She starts swinging gracefully towards him and he notches an arrow, reluctant but ready to hurt her if he has to if that's what it takes. He sends one flying but she dodges and it whistles past her arm. When she gets closer he swings his bow lengthways towards her legs in an undercut which she jumps, aiming a punch at his nose; he catches her fist and grunts with the effort of twisting her arm behind her back and pinning her against him in a headlock – he yelps as she flings her head backwards and he nearly gets clobbered._

'_You ready to talk sensibly yet?' he growls into her ear. _

'_Sensible,' she grits out, voice hoarse, 'doesn't seem to be your style.'_

_He sighs._

'_I don't want to be saved.'_

_This time, her voice is quiet, and he gets the impression she thinks she has a shot at convincing him to let her go. But no matter what happens, whatever choice she ultimately makes, he can't let her leave this warehouse tonight._

_His hand is currently pressed against her neck, and he moves his thumb slightly, finding a spot just below her jugular. Carefully, he applies the pressure he practiced a million times in basic training and after a few seconds, Natalia Romanova's body goes limp in his arms. Her breathing gets slow and even and her head lolls back against his shoulder. He manages to scoop her legs up and adjusts so he has her in a fireman's carry, preparing to make a potentially dicey jump back to the ground of the warehouse._

'_Too bad. I want to save you.'_


	2. Prologue Part 2

**Prologue Part 2**

_Coulson likes to say that being his handler is like lobbing a grenade from the trenches – you know it's going to take out the enemy, but there's always the risk that it'll blow while you're still close enough to catch some of the damage (Coulson's the kind of person who gets a nerdy little thrill from constructing metaphors like that). And Clint would feel bad about it – the ton of paperwork that lands on Coulson's desk when he takes out a mark a week early because they got on his nerves, or the verbal ass kickings from Fury when he kills someone with an explosive tipped arrow instead of a regular one because he was bored and the whole building collapses – except he's pretty sure he's the only one of Coulson's charges that doesn't bore him to tears. Whenever he sees him post said paperwork sessions and ass kickings, he usually gets a speech about how 'protocol is there for a reason, Barton,' and 'one more incident like this and Fury's going to stick you behind a desk' and 'if I die of a heart attack before someone makes an honest man out of me, I'll kill you, Barton' – but he says it with a smile on his face._

_When Clint calls for an extraction for him and the Black Widow – unconscious but still very much alive – he swears he can hear the smile slipping away._

'_Are you telling me you failed to eliminate the target, Agent Barton?' Coulson's voice crackles through the comm device. He can't pull off angry or threatening, but he can do apprehensive and please-God-tell-me-I'm-wrong._

'_Yeah, that'd be about right,' Clint answers. He's waiting on the roof of the warehouse with Natalia Romanova lying at his feet – hands and feet tied, just as a precaution – after using one of his nifty new high-wire arrows to lift them up there. 'How far away is the helicarrier? Because she's out but I doubt she'll be out for long.'_

'_Five minutes. She's supposed to be out permanently, Agent.'_

'_I had a better idea.'_

'_Nowhere in your job description does it say 'have ideas,' Agent.'_

'_Come on, I'm taking some initiative, using my instincts; all those good things.'_

'_Barton.' Coulson's voice is serious now. 'Cut the crap. What are you doing.'_

_To be honest, he doesn't really know. _

_He may have done some bureaucratically unadvisable and destructive things on missions before, but this is something completely different. This is disobeying orders; this is way beyond his authority, this might cost him his job – and despite his habit of toying with the perimeters of that job, he loves it. He needs it. He doesn't know where or what he'd be without it, because God knows there's not anything else on earth he's good at besides this job. _

_But even as he thinks of all that, he looks at the girl on the ground. Nine days of watching her and he never saw her sleep; her face is always beautiful, but for the first time he sees it unmarred by anger and focus and pretence, and softened by sleep – even forced as it is – with a curl drifting over her cheek and her eyelashes black against that white skin, she looks almost innocent. And that's not normal for an assassin, he knows – some lines are not meant to disappear in unconsciousness; not all the danger is meant to evaporate. But she looks innocent. Like she did in those peaceful moments on the balcony and when her mask broke as she presented herself to him, ready for death. Not innocent in the traditional sense of the word – she's done too much, seen too much – but in the way he defines it, which is that she hasn't yet become her job. She's a person, not just a mercenary. She wanted to die rather than remain one. There's good left in her._

_He's never killed someone like that before, and he never wants to._

_So he's hoping that SHIELD will listen to him, and look at her, and give her a second chance – and him a ten thousandth._

'_I'm being a discriminate killer,' he tells Coulson. 'You know I trust SHIELD. I kill for you guys. I choose not to do that, you gotta trust I have a good reason. Besides, we're meant to be the good guys – if we see a reason not to shoot, we shouldn't shoot.'_

'_It better not be that she's pretty.'_

_He snorts. 'Of course not. I mean, she is, but that's not why.'_

_There's a pause. He knows Coulson has two choices here. He can give a direct order to kill – though that's never going to work, and would only end up making Clint guilty of more disobedience and definitely get him dismissed, and despite all his complaining, Clint knows Coulson doesn't want that._

_His second option is to trust him._

_The silence grows and he's just about to say something when Coulson says, 'We see you. Helicarrier's overhead, I've got a door open for you. Do you need help getting up here?'_

_Thank God._

'_Nope,' he says. 'See you in a few.' He selects another high wire arrow and notches it into his bow, then crouches down and carefully slides an arm under Romanova's waist. He settles her against his side and once he's sure he has her, he anchors her there and shoots. The Helicarrier, invisible to all who don't know what to look for but for a tiny square where Coulson has made an entrance for him – which glows with light and a very familiar silhouette - is straight overhead. The arrow leaves a thick black cord like a comet tail, and when he hears the thud of the arrow tip latching onto steel, he loops the cord twice around his foot, steels himself and then tugs on his bow, activating the retrieval function – and he and the Black Widow zoom into the sky, reaching the belly of the Helicarrier in less than ten seconds._

_Coulson is waiting for him, his expression harried, and when he sees Clint carrying the Black Widow in his arms he groans._

'_I was hoping this was all your idea of a joke,' he sighs, and then waves behind him. Maria Hill emerges, followed by two agents pushing a gurney. Clint gets the idea and lays Romanova down carefully; immediately the agents rip off the bonds he made around her wrists and ankles with rope from his pack and replace them with handcuffs and restraints. He understands why, but the sight of it makes him feel almost guilty, despite this being the price of having saved her life._

_They start wheeling her away._

'_Whoa, whoa!' he says quickly. 'Where are you taking her, what are you going to –'_

'_We're going to sedate her,' Hill says angrily, and he's treated to her most wrathful glare, and knows that she at least thinks Coulson's a fool for trusting him. 'She's arguably the most dangerous person on this ship, Barton, and she just happens to be an enemy. What were you expecting?'_

'_She's already out!'_

'_But she'll be waking up any second and we need to figure out what we're going to do with her first,' says Coulson sternly. 'Hill, take her.'_

_If she was any less tightly wound, she'd poke her tongue out at him, but instead she sticks her nose in the air and marches off with the two agents pushing the gurney with Romanova on it behind her. Clint feels a pang as they go; he feels responsible for her, and if she does wake up he'd like to be the one to explain to her why she's not only not dead, but on board the SHIELD helicarrier. He doesn't think she'll react well to captivity. _

_And then there are the bones of a plan, forming in his head; the new life he talked about for her. He has a feeling there's only one way SHIELD is going to let her live in the long term, and if it's going to work, he's going to have to talk her into trusting him without Fury getting there first and undoubtedly provoking her with his heavy handed, All-American macho act into proving Clint wrong._

'_Come with me,' Coulson says, looking at Clint with the most sombre expression he's ever had. Clint attempts a smile, but Coulson doesn't even twitch, just leads him into a room off the side of the entry bay and closes the door behind them._

'_Alright, Barton,' he says. 'Tell me now, has she got something on you? This room scrambles all electronic signals, no bugs work in here. Did you bring her here of your own volition?'_

'_Yes, of course,' he says, kind of stunned. 'What – did you think I'd bring her here if I thought that was part of some plan of hers? What the hell do you think she could ever do to make me do that?'_

_He can't help it; he's hurt. He stares at Coulson, searching his face for some kind of explanation, but Coulson just looks weary._

'_I don't know,' he admits. 'I didn't think – I'm sorry. But then, explain to me why you've brought her back, why you didn't kill her! And what do you think we're going to do with her?'_

'_I don't kill good people,' he says simply. _

'_And you think she's a good person?' Coulson asks, incredulous. The way he's looking at Clint, it's like he thinks he's lost his mind – and maybe he has, but with every second he finds he's growing more and more resolute. Even as the part of his brain that is pure SHIELD agent screams at him for being so irrational. It's like once he let himself believe he could save her, that was it – there's no going back. He can't bear to fail now – for the first time in a long time he's responsible for something other than stopping a heartbeat, and he won't let it be for nothing._

_And it's her – he's watched her for nine days, and for some reason he doesn't entirely understand, those nine days were enough to make him utterly, irrevocably… invested. _

'_I do,' he answers._

'_Barton – you read her file! She is the antithesis of everything SHIELD stands for, she has done terrible things and not all of them to terrible people – she –'_

'_She,' Clint interrupts, 'is a good person.' He can see the disbelief in Coulson's eyes and struggles not to growl in frustration, he has to make him understand –' I can see it, she is, behind all the training and the indoctrination and what those people have made her into – I can see it, man, you've got to just trust me, okay?' He puts a hand on Coulson's shoulder, desperate to make him see. 'She wanted to die because she doesn't want to kill innocents anymore – you know how many people I've killed like that? None! It doesn't happen – because SHIELD kills bad people, and bad people always care more about staying alive than what they do to accomplish that - she doesn't. I'm not killing her and I'm not letting anyone else do it, either. Just… trust me.'_

_Because it's Coulson's opinion that matters, really – more than anyone's, more even than Fury's, who is really too far up above them, too isolated, to really understand what makes an agent and what makes an enemy – he's great at the big picture, but he relies on Coulson to know his men. It's Coulson who brought in Clint when he was just a kid with a bow and arrows and a chip on his shoulder; Coulson who has the final say on performance reviews and gives the stamp of approval to agents returning after medical or psychiatric leave; Coulson who Fury will listen to, who Fury trusts; Coulson who can change Fury's mind._

_The question is whether Coulson can trust Clint enough to do it. _

_For a while he just looks at him, in that narrow-eyed way he does when he's trying to understand something, and Clint tries to put everything on his face because he's so sure he's right – he's so, so sure. _

_Natalia Romanova can be one of them. He can help her._

_After a while, Coulson sighs. 'You really believe in this? In her?'_

'_Yeah.' He can't believe it – he's coming around. He can tell by the smile returning to his face, the old Barton-you-drive-me-crazy expression replacing the Barton-you-actually-are-crazy one._

_~(*A*)~_

_Agent Barton really needs to be more careful._

_She's sure he knows that pressure point incapacitation doesn't actually last that long, but in all his white knight excitement it seems to have slipped his mind, and so when she wakes up – zooming through the air on what she thinks is a zip line into an invisible flying ship (she can't help but be impressed he manages to hold her with one arm) – it's really easy to pretend she's still unconscious, because he doesn't even check. And when he lays her down, she manages to get one of her remote listening devices pinned to his shirt without breaking her cover. When she's wheeled away and some woman with a really bitchy voice who keeps muttering things like 'stupid, reckless moron' and 'get us all killed' injects her with a sedative, she pretends she hasn't spent years working up physical and mental immunities to drugs like that, and stays still, letting the dizziness and fatigue wash over her, but remaining aware._

_She can't believe she let him knock her out like that – but she really, really can't believe where she is. She knows all about the helicarrier, from her days back in the KGB when she was privy to all kinds of intelligence – this is the roving SHIELD headquarters. And he brought her – an assassin, a spy, and Russian, no less – on board willingly._

_She's disappointed because she thought she had come to know him, a little, in the nine days he watched her and she pretended not to know. She came to like his eyes on the back of her neck. She thought he was smart – because though she spotted him, he was extraordinary – his gaze so often came from places she couldn't imagine getting to, and he was so determined, watching even in the middle of the night when she went out to smoke on the balcony. She didn't really like smoking, but she did it the first night she noticed him and found that it was kind of peaceful, the two of them awake when everyone else was asleep, and she was secure in the knowledge that he wasn't going to make her suffer. He wasn't going to drag it out. When he shot her, it would be fast, and it would be final, and in a weird way that made her feel safe with him. She was so sure she understood him, because he worked so much like she did – he watched, and waited._

_She doesn't like being wrong about people, and she's not accustomed to it. And she finds that for the first time in years, because she had expectations of someone for the first time in years, she feels betrayed. _

_He wants to save her, but he doesn't understand – there's no going back for her, there's no undoing all the innocent blood she's spilt, all the precious secrets she's stolen, lives she's ruined. Even if she doesn't end up in prison, it's not like she can just go off and turn into a normal girl; get a job, have friends, whatever that entails exactly (she doesn't know). She's not capable. _

'… _bring her here of your own volition?'_

_A voice – the voice of the man who met her and Barton in the ship – sounds in her ear, transmitted through the listening device she planted on Barton. There's a loud buzzing noise that she knows means they're in a room with electronic scramblers, but this is Stark technology, stolen from Howard Stark back in the 70s by the Russians – it'll take more than that to shut it down._

'_Yes, of course,' Barton says. 'What – did you think I'd bring her here if I thought that was part of some plan of hers? What the hell do you think she could ever do to make me do that?'_

_He's obviously hurt by the implications, which Natasha understands, if she can't exactly relate. She's never had a boss whose opinion she particularly cared for or respected, but it's obvious Barton cares what this man thinks. And it's also obvious that the man respects Barton, because he apologizes and actually asks him to explain himself – God, if she'd done what Barton did back when she was working for the KGB, she'd already be dead, not having a heart to heart with her employer._

'_I don't kill good people.'_

'_And you think she's a good person?'_

'_I do.'_

_She's so shocked she almost laughs. _

_He was sent to kill her – surely he knows what she's done. She's killed, without question – men, women, and on one awful occasion, a six year old girl, though she hadn't meant to. She's broken up marriages, whole families, to get answers to questions she wants. She's left people broke, homeless, heartbroken, destroyed – and that's if they're lucky. She's tortured. Taunted. She's a cog in the machine that brings misery to humanity. And he had the chance to take her out – save the world and her both a lot of trouble – and he didn't because he thinks she's a good person._

_She can't believe how wrong she was about him. He's a moron._

'… _behind all the training and the indoctrination and what those people have made her into – I can see it, man, you've got to just trust me, okay?'_

_But the training is who she is. Her skillset is her lifeblood. There's no virtuous little girl locked behind the ability to kill a man with her teeth. She isn't absolved because someone made her into what she is._

_She can tell he thinks so, though, and his voice is so earnest it makes her stomach ache. He really wants to help her._

_She listens to him talk about the bad people that SHIELD kill, and she realizes he really believes in what he does – he thinks SHIELD are a force for good, a protecting entity. She envies his certainty, his purpose. All she's ever had is the search for another way to survive, another paycheque. _

'_I'm not killing her and I'm not letting anyone else do it either. Just… trust me.'_

_It's this that undoes her. Refusing to kill her is one thing – some men are too moral to take a life if they think it's wrong, but oh, there are so few who will actually defend it if others try, and he's offering to stand up for her against an organization he believes in; people he respects. It makes no sense. She's never had anyone take a single risk for her before, and her chest feels tight; despite the nonsense of it all, that this will never work, she feels a smile try to tug at her lips and hopes that no one is watching her. If she was a normal person she'd laugh, she'd cry; it's joy swelling in her chest, the childish feeling that someone is looking out for her and that makes everything better. She has no defences against this feeling; she's never experienced it before and has no practice holding it back, even as her brain tells her she's being ridiculous and it doesn't matter – because it does matter, it matters a lot, no matter what it comes to in the end._

'_You really believe in this? In her?'_

'_Yeah.' _

_Oh my God._

'_You want her to join SHIELD, don't you?'_

_Her eyes snap open._

'_I – yes.'_

_Holy shit._

'_Come on, let's go talk to Fury.'_

'_If it's alright, can you do that? I want to go talk to her, convince her before Fury gets there.'_

'_Alright.' The man's voice is hesitant. 'But Barton. Make sure it's what she really wants. We can fight for her, but there's no point if she doesn't even want this.'_

_She can hear their footsteps as they separate; the clatter of the metal door closing behind him. Her heart thumps in anticipation; he obviously knows where they must have taken her because in less than two minutes, she hears him enter. She considers pretending to still be unconscious, but she wants to have this conversation; she doesn't want to pretend. So she opens her eyes, and sees that she's in an empty room – literally empty, no attachments on the walls or light fixtures but for a single fluorescent tube built into the ceiling – and Agent Barton is standing with his arms crossed against the door, watching her._

'_Uh – hey,' he says, taking a step forward. 'Didn't think you'd be awake yet.'_

'_So you were going to watch me sleep? That's creepy,' she bites back. _

_It's in her nature to be aggressive or passive aggressive as the case may be, but she never shows happiness, never gratitude or relief or wonder; they're weaknesses. So even though she likes this man, she won't ever let him know that._

_He laughs, taken aback. She gets the feeling he was expecting something along the lines of spitting rage, suicidal melancholy or total silence as opposed to malicious wit, but she can see he's pleased._

'_So I guess you're wondering why you're here,' he continues. Grey eyes on hers._

'_You have a saviour complex, clearly.'_

_He raises his eyebrows. 'It wouldn't be very sensible to go into professional assassination with one of those, would it?'_

_She smirks. 'I get the feeling sensible isn't really your style.'_

_There's a moment of quiet when he just looks at her. And because this time she can look back – and she's a little less distracted than she was in the warehouse – she sees that he's not just watching, he's searching for good in her and nobody has ever bothered to do that for her before. He's something new, and she doesn't understand why he's going to so much trouble to save her, but she's starting to think it's not something she should be angry about, but grateful for. _

_She's not committing to the idea yet, but the very fact that he's gotten her to hope is a fucking miracle and even if it all goes to hell, she'll remember that._

'_It's not,' he says finally. 'Obviously I'm not going to kill you, like I was told to. You're too good, Romanova. We don't have anything like you, no one with your skillset or your instincts. And SHIELD is always looking for people who can do things no one else can do. That's why they took me.'_

'_I can't say I've come across all that many archers in my time, it's true.'_

'_So this is the deal,' he says, and he takes another step forward, this time resting his hands on the railing of her gurney and leaning forward, eyes intense, and all his will conveyed in them, like he can convince her to trust him with the sheer power of his gaze. 'You join SHIELD; become an agent. It'll mean basic training, because you have to get qualified, but that'll be nothing for you. You'll have a probation period. It'll probably be longer than any other recruit's because at first, no one will trust you. They might make you see a therapist; you'll know what to tell him, I don't think you're the kind of person who'll bother trying to learn anything from that. And you'll be shadowed, probably for a long time – I don't know when they'll let you do a mission on your own. But –' and he smiles now, 'you'll get to have a life. You're good at something, you know, and we can give you a way to do it that won't make you want to kill yourself.' She snorts with laughter at this, and his smile grows._

'_And you're not worried that I might spy on you? Sell your secrets, shoot someone in the back during a fight?' she asks curiously._

_He shrugs. 'I think you have a reason for everything you do and you'd have no reason to do that.'_

_He gets her, and that's fucking strange for her because not only does the phrase sound horribly prepubescent and stupid, but it's almost like not being alone._

_So she says yes._

_And the look on his face makes her stop hoping and start to believe, because he doesn't doubt for a second that she can do it – she can turn good, she can be a SHIELD agent, she can get everyone to trust her one day. She hasn't earned this weird faith he has in her and she'll spend a lot of time in years to come trying to do it retroactively, repaying a debt that she feels every second of every day that she isn't killing for money or wandering the streets of Russia. _

_He takes off her handcuffs and ankle restraints, and though he never takes his eyes off her, she can tell he doesn't really think she's going to try anything; he's just a good agent, doing what his superiors would tell him to do in the wake of doing a hell of a lot of stuff they are pretty pissed off about. He tells her that Coulson – who she figures out must be the man he was talking to earlier – is on their side and that he's got more common sense than anyone he's ever met so they must not be completely crazy (he keeps saying 'we' like this was partly her idea). He talks a lot. She doesn't say much because she doesn't really have conversations with people that don't involve tricking them or getting information, and he's treating her like a friend, which is something she doesn't believe in, and shouldn't encourage (though if she was going to have a friend, she'd like one like him). She'll pay him back some day for everything he's done for her, but it'll be as a fellow agent, hopefully – nothing more._

_He says the real challenge is going to be convincing Fury, who she knows from rumours is supposed to be this huge hardass, but when he comes into her room later that night she starts laughing because he has an honest-to-god pirate patch and she's never seen anything less discreet in her life. And this may be a good sight better than what he was expecting, which was probably for her to start cursing in Russian and writhing on her gurney, but it still doesn't make the best first impression. _

_He doesn't even talk to her directly for the first fifteen minutes. He spends those reaming out Barton. You're an employee of this organization like everyone else, he says. Your job is to follow orders and you only have that job as long as I still believe you're remotely capable of doing that, he says. You're foolish and short-sighted and reckless and disobedient. You can't keep going around ignoring our timelines and blowing up buildings and bringing home Russian assassins (and she stows away that bit about blowing up buildings in the back of her mind, because she needs to know more about that)._

_But when he tells Barton that he's on probation and Barton's face falls, she interrupts because she owes him a debt and she tells Fury to add Barton's probation time onto hers instead._

_And the burning anger on his face fades into something like shock… and then consideration._

'_So you want to become a SHIELD agent, do you?'_

_She doesn't like admitting that she wants things. But with a smart retort on the tip of her tongue, she looks at Barton shaking his head behind Fury's back and answers honestly. _

'_Yes.'_

_Fury asks her question after question. How old is she? She doesn't know – she thinks around 20. What are her skills? She knows they know this, but she starts to rattle off a list anyway, proving her honesty – he stops her at around her 37__th__ bullet point. How many people has she killed? 89. Does she have any ties left to Russia? No, not a one. No family, no friends. Nothing._

_He tells her that Coulson vouched for Barton, and Barton vouched for her, and that gets her a chance. If she puts a toe out of line, if it even looks like she's got a secret agenda, he'll fillet her with a rusty spoon, but she has a chance. He says she'll have to complete basic training, and for her that will include a test of her abilities to cooperate with a group of agents who don't like her or trust her or respect her, because she'll probably have to deal with that for a long time – maybe always. She agrees. He tells Barton that he's going to be personally responsible for her – at that she opens her mouth to protest, because she is responsible for herself and she doesn't need to owe him anymore than she already does, but he talks over the top of her and says it's fine. Fury says her probation period will be eighteen months, with an additional six months since she's taking on Barton's time, and when Barton starts to protests she kicks him in the shins. Fury tells them both to stop behaving like children and starts to list more conditions: she will undergo a year of bi-weekly psychological evaluation, she will be under surveillance for the first two months, she will do what she is told when she is told to do it and when she's finally cleared to start work, she will be shadowed by Agent Barton – indefinitely._

_They answer all the questions with a 'yes, sir', some willingly and some less willingly, but where he hesitates she jumps in and when she glares impudently at Fury for his fucking nerve and looks apt to answer cutely or worse, in Russian, he jumps in. They manage to sound reasonable and vaguely apologetic by default of covering for each other._

_Almost like a team._

_**A/N: So I know this was an absolutely monster-length prologue; but the actual story starts next! I am really excited about this story – and I've actually written a fair bit of it, so for at least the near future you can expect relatively frequent updates, on average perhaps about once a week (give or take a few days). I really hope you like it – I am completely obsessed with the Avengers and a decent percentage of that obsession is directed onto Clint and Natasha, who I adore and whose relationship is vastly underappreciated fic-fodder (I can't believe there isn't more!) The story is going to include both present-time story, which will be the majority, with a few flashbacks where relevant. There will be action, angst and romance, as well as much Avenger-interaction. **_

_**I would really love some reviews to let me know whether I'm doing okay. Please let me know if you think I'm doing the characters justice, or what you would like to see more of! Thank you to everyone who reviewed the last chapter – they make me indescribably happy.**_


	3. The Third Time

'Nat, c'mon.'

She'd rather be anywhere than where she is right now, sitting in the meagre inches of space on the quinjet bench that are not taken up by Clint; she's so mad that she moves away every time his leg brushes her – she can't even stand to touch him. The fact that he's left her so little room is an indication of how weak he is right now. He's lying with his head on Cap's rolled up jacket, and there's a medic kneeling next to him trying to dress the wound on his chest but he's not making it easy: he keeps trying to sit up, because Natasha is ignoring him.

She doesn't remember the last time she was this angry.

'Nat!'

He knows she can hear him perfectly well, but he just keeps saying her name louder – like she's going to start speaking to him again just to shut him up. It's worked in the past, but not this time. She is speechless. Her chest feels hollow. It feels like a vase that's been broken and glued back together: trying to make words would crack it; even the controlled breaths she's taking seem to swell in her and strain the edges. It's like her body is a machine someone has put the wrong kind of fuel in; she was not made to feel things like this and her heart is aching with the wrongness of it all. Sitting here, still and silent, is her effort to keep herself together until she can get off the jet because she will not let him see her scared. She doesn't want him to know she's scared – she only wants him to see her anger.

She feels a hand on her shoulder and whips her head around.

He's managed to sit up, despite the best efforts of the harried looking young medic, and the hand on her shoulder is half supplicating and half a necessary measure to hold himself upright; she has a mad urge to hug him but shoves it down. He's pale from blood loss, and visibly shaky; her stomach clenches because he's the most stable person she knows and the shaking is awful and she doesn't want to look at it. But despite the fact that his eyes are glassy, he's focussed on her.

'I'm not going to say I'm sorry,' he says hoarsely.

'I don't care what you say,' she snaps, though she does want a sorry – it would mean he's not planning on doing this again in the future and at least that would be something. Her voice is tight with fury. As she shrugs his hand off she glares at the medic. 'Can't you control your patient?'

'No-one can control me,' Clint says, eyes boring into hers, and she knows he's not just talking about here and now.

'Great! You're a fucking mess but at least nobody can control you - ' she says, and to her horror her voice cracks; she explodes off the bench and strides off towards the cockpit, unable to stand another minute of him trying to get her to think this is okay – that it's perfectly reasonable for him to throw himself in front of a bullet for her.

_No one can control me? Fuck him._

Steve and Bruce are piloting the quinjet; Steve only needed a couple of lessons to bring him up to date on the technology and it turns out Bruce knew everything there is to know about flying from books and manuals. At the sound of her footsteps, Bruce turns his head and raises his eyebrows. 'How's he doing?'

'He's alright enough to piss me off, so I'd say he's fine,' she says shortly.

'You know he just wanted to –'

'Protect me?' she asks. 'I don't need his protection. He's not my bodyguard, it's not his job to do this shit.'

'He's your friend, Romanoff,' Steve says. 'And friends don't protect each other because it's their _job_…'

'Just fly, Rogers.'

It's not fair.

She will never stop owing him. It's like he doesn't want her to stop – he keeps _doing_ things like this, this is the third time in their lives that he has intercepted some kind of attack meant for her but it's not even just that – it's that since they've been staying in Stark Tower he brings her a cup of coffee every morning – and every year on her birthday (the day he picked as her birthday anyway, which is November 1st), he buys her a drink and if she's not in the same country then it's waiting for her when she returns, and like an idiot she's stopped caring what day she was born and always feels older when she drinks a vodka martini.

He has always wanted to spend time with her, even when they don't have any work to do; he made her be his friend. He forces her to laugh and to enjoy herself and to be human, and she's tired of feeling like she owes him so much that she will never, ever be able to pay him back for everything he's done for her – her debt is too big now, it's millions of dollars and years of labour and first born children and anything, really, he deserves anything he wants – but she knows what it is that he does want and that's something she can never give him, even if he does deserve it (and more).

And then he goes and jumps in front of a bullet for her and she will never be able to make it up to him, ever – she doesn't know how.

~(*A*)~

He's been shot before, but this is the first time he did it on purpose.

It was supposed to be a simple mission – just a quick trip for him and Nat to DC, to check out a guy named Julian Tine who was suspected of bioterrorist plotting and by some strange coincidence had recently decided to move in with a doctor working at a research lab for the Centre for Disease Control. As far as sneaky-ways-to-get-information went, it was pretty conspicuous, which was exactly what made Fury think it may have all been a false alarm – it was too obvious a ploy.

Clint didn't care that it was a relatively boring mission, supposedly just surveillance – they'd been staying at Stark Tower for a month now and as nice as it was to have some time off, both of them were getting restless. When Fury called and asked him if he wanted to stretch his legs a bit and watch Tine at the CDC staff party to make sure he didn't sneak away to look at any restricted files or attempt to break into one of the labs, he jumped on it. He invited Natasha even though he didn't really think he'd need her, because he always has more fun with her, it always feels less like work with her, and the level of enthusiasm was kind of sad – they really needed to get back to work.

They spent three hours watching Tine from an air conditioning vent which was big enough for both of them to sit in, drinking coffee from a thermos and making fun of all the researchers' terrible dancing – he's a middle aged, moderately handsome guy with a shock of cornstalk yellow hair who admittedly seemed like an odd match for Dr Frieda Rasgotra, a beautiful Indian woman in her late twenties who looked more like a supermodel than a doctor. And he was _boring. _He spent the whole party sitting alone at a table while his girlfriend danced with her friends, fiddling with his phone and eating vol-au-vents.

It was nice, for once, to have a mission with her where they weren't constantly tense, worrying over their next move or keeping up some elaborate cover story. Even if things had been weird between them lately.

It was when the party finished that everything went to hell. A man in a lab coat met Tine as he left the building, discreetly slipping a thick envelope into his jacket pocket. They didn't know what it was, but their orders were clear – don't let Tine take off with any restricted information, and so they followed him and Rasgotra out to the parking lot. He'd honestly thought Tine would be scared shitless of his bow, and if not that, Natasha's guns and their respective somewhat intimidating presences – he'd honestly thought violence wouldn't be necessary. They followed him in shadows, keeping out of sight until he reached his car, and then they emerged.

He hadn't expected Tine to have backup.

Natasha said 'Mr Tine, you have something on your person which –'

And Rasgotra pulled out a gun. Pointed it at her head.

He didn't think, just felt terror grow like something black and bubbling, making it hard to breathe – his heart seemed to fall and hit the ground. It felt like a thousand years passed as he watched that gun pointed at Natasha; he could practically see a line from where the barrel ended to where the bullet would hit her, right in the middle of her forehead.

It's truly amazing how much you can feel in the split second that the person you love most is about to be taken out of the world. He knows he's going to have nightmares about it. It was mostly just blind terror, but a lot of it was rage. At Rasgotra for pointing the gun, at Tine for just fucking being there, at Fury for not knowing what the hell he was sending them into, at himself for inviting Natasha, at Natasha for accepting. At _time_, for not being up to the moment where everything between them is said yet. This is unforgiveable.

He did the only thing he could have done, and that's what she doesn't understand. _It's the only thing he could have done._

He ran, and he jumped in front of her.

It's like it was meant to happen that way, because Rasgotra shot as he jumped and the bullet hit him in the chest but it was near his shoulder and really, not too bad. He hit the ground fucking hard, he's going to have the mother of all bruises, and okay, so gunshot wounds sting like a bitch and he's feeling pretty woozy, but it's no worse than being drunk and getting his ass kicked. Well… maybe slightly worse. Like getting his ass kicked by ten guys after a three day bender. If one of the ten guys then proceeded to ram a piece of metal through his chest and slam him into the ground.

He doesn't feel bad about taking the shot; he feels pretty fucking great about it actually. He has never been happier about a single other decision he's made in his life. He doesn't care that Rasgotra and Tine got away; apparently they were more skilled than Fury knew, disappearing into the night on foot.

But he does feel bad about scaring Natasha. The moments after he hit the ground are kind of confusing to him now and there's a blank period between closing his eyes in the parking lot and waking up on a quinjet, but he remembers her scream around the time the bullet hit him in mid-air. He has a hazy maybe-memory of her kneeling over him, eyes wide –

_No, Clint – stay awake – open your eyes, hey! _

And this is a woman who has had boiling oil poured on her feet without making a sound, who has fought aliens and monsters and the very worst that humanity has to offer and never backed down for a minute. He's not an idiot; he knows she's afraid sometimes. He's probably the only person who knows. This is the thing – people think Natasha's cold, that she doesn't care. And it's not like he doesn't ache for more from her; it's not like he doesn't wish, more and more these days, that she loved him the way he loves her. But she does love him – he knows that, even if it's hard to feel it sometimes. Even if it's only as a friend. And she was terrified today. He hates that.

He can hear her, Bruce and Steve talking up the front of the quinjet but he can't make out what they're saying; it sounds like they're underwater or something. The dumbass medic they brought keeps poking him.

'Do you even know what you're doing?' he croaks irritably, and the guy huffs.

'I'm a fully qualified medical professional, Agent, but it's hard to treat you when you _won't stay still,' _he says pointedly.

He would really, really like to sit up, or at least prop himself up on his elbows, because he wants to see her. But the dumbass medic has a point and also, his muscles feel like concrete and every effort makes him shake like crazy so he gives up and lets the guy work on him for a while before going off to make a phone call on the quinjet line. Maybe if he plays nice he'll get to avoid a stay in the hospital.

After a while, he hears heavy footsteps clunking towards him and recognizes that Steve is coming over – even after all this time, he still walks a bit like a guy who thinks he's three feet shorter and sixty pounds lighter than he actually is. His face appears hovering over Clint and he attempts to raise his arm to give him a thumbs up, but finds that he can't even summon the strength and the effort sends a shooting pain through his arm that makes stars explode in his head – he winces.

'How's it going?' Steve asks, face filled with concern.

'Alright,' he manages to get out; even talking is sapping his energy. He closes his eyes. 'On a scale of one to ten, how mad is she?'

'On a scale of one to ten…? Sixteen.'

He exhales. It's moments like this when he wishes things were different between them. He wants to tell her it's okay that she's scared for him, but she would never admit that she is – he doesn't know if she even admits it to herself or if she just pretends she's mad about that stupid fucking debt she thinks she owes him. He wants to tell her why he's glad that he took that bullet for her, why he'd do it again, but he knows he wouldn't see her again for months afterwards. He wants there to be something he can say that will make her feel less guilty, but he won't lie to her. He can't say he won't do it again.

And fuck, he just got shot. No matter how it happened, he wishes she would just come over and sit with him because he feels like shit and having her there would make it a lot better, and so would having her not be mad at him.

'She'll get over it,' Steve says, but his intonation makes it sound like a question. He gets it – sometimes it's pretty hard to imagine the wrath of the Romanoff ending, ever.

'Yeah, she'll get over it,' Clint says. 'But she'll never let me forget about it, believe me.'

'I don't understand why she's so angry. She'd do the same for you.'

He knows she would, and he's got a _'yes' _waiting to be said but he gets a wave of nausea that completely prohibits opening his mouth, so he closes his eyes and tries to breathe normally. Steve seems to get the hint and he feels a hand pat his knee, then hears the same slightly off-beat footsteps fading away as he returns to the cockpit.

He doesn't remember feeling quite this bad the last time he was shot, which was in New Delhi, eight years ago – before he even met Natasha. That time he performed meatball surgery on himself in an alley behind an old restaurant with whiskey as an antiseptic and blue stitches because he had to steal the thread from a guest's handbag and her sewing kit didn't have standard black. It doesn't make sense that this is worse – or not worse, exactly, but different, because the wound itself doesn't hurt quite as much – a dull pain as opposed to unbelievable agony – but he feels like he's been run over by a truck. He's so tired he can't even move… the mere act of breathing is getting painful, he's so dizzy and he can feel his heartbeat pulsing throughout his entire body like someone is hitting him with a hammer.

This isn't normal… he wants to make a noise _where's the goddamn medic _but he can't remember how to form words. He needs Natasha to come back in here and kick the guy's ass for leaving him alone. He can make her laugh if she just comes back in. He can make her forgive him.

He just needs her to be here full stop… _just come back…_

~(*A*)~

She offers to take Steve's spot as pilot for a while because she needs something to distract herself with, and he goes out to check on Clint. They're still half an hour away from the SHIELD infirmary in New York – because their contracts ask them to _'avoid civilian hospitals at your own discretion in order to minimize detection and interference with covert operations' _and in one of his brief moments of consciousness on the parking lot floor, Clint had mumbled _'quinjet' _where a normal person would say _'ambulance' _and as furious as she was, she trusted him.

She's always liked flying. It was basically the only thing that SHIELD basic training taught her that she didn't already know, and she didn't have to do it with a gang of other agents watching her, distrusting her, waiting for her to fail – for as long as the flight lasted, she only had to worry about what she could see, and that was the sky.

For the first time, the dark of the horizon at night doesn't calm her.

Steve comes back much sooner than she expected and she tightens her grip on the steerage wheel, reluctant to give it up.

He doesn't ask for it back, but says; 'I think you should go back there, Romanoff.'

'I'm fine where I am, thanks,' she says shortly.

She can practically hear the disappointment in his voice, and fuck, she likes Steve but when he gets all preachy and old fashioned like this she just wants to punch him really hard in the face.

'Your best friend just got shot for you,' he says severely. 'Whether you wanted him to or not, he's hurt and you should… you should go be with him.'

She knows he's right. She shouldn't be angry, but she doesn't know how to let it go. She knows she should be back there, holding his hand and fucking thanking him… and just thanking God that he's okay, he's not dead… he's still here. But the sight of him makes her want to cry. She wants to be back there just as much as she doesn't want to.

There's silence as Steve's words hang in the air and both he and Bruce keep quiet because she's sure they can sense she's barely holding it together.

God, she's got to be better than this.

She tries to imagine how he'd be acting if the situation were reversed and she'd jumped in front of a bullet meant for him. She can see it _so _clearly – he'd be furious, he'd be pacing in the back of the jet, raving about how stupid she was, how he didn't _ask _her to do it (and of course that means she shouldn't have). He'd be badmouthing her to the medic, telling him how much trouble she causes him and how many times she's almost died ('and you say _I _have a saviour complex?'). He would, essentially, be driving her completely insane and she'd probably beg him to go sit in the cockpit and leave her in peace.

But she has no doubt he'd stay with her anyway.

'Rogers, take my spot,' she says finally, and he squeezes her shoulder as she gives him the headphones and slips out of the pilot seat; Bruce gives her an approving nod.

She's barely got the door open when she hears a loud thump coming from the back and apprehension rises in her; a second later she sees Clint sitting hunched over on the ground, clearly having tried to get up off the bench and fallen, and her heart spikes with fear. She runs over and crashes to her knees next to him – he looks awful, _God how did he get so bad so fast – _he is covered in sweat and he doesn't even seem completely awake, breathing harshly and listing to the side with confused eyes.

She presses her hand against his forehead, which is damp with sweat; he rests his head against it, exhausted. He's burning up. She feels sick.

'He's um… he's really hot,' she says shakily; she's not sure who to (where's the fucking medic?) When she moves her hand away he leans forward and rests his forehead against her collarbone, and she gets the feeling that if she wasn't there he would have just kept pitching forward onto the floor. He is radiating heat_, it is not okay for a human being to be this hot_, and yet when she rubs his shoulder – it's the best she can bring herself to do to comfort him – she can feel him shivering and in the moments when the engine goes quiet she can tell that his breathing is funny, something is wrong; it's too slow. She's not used to this – he's always a pain in the ass when he's injured or sick, he never shuts up, he can't be this quiet – something is seriously wrong.

'Clint,' she says. She's pathetic – she doesn't sound confident or reassuring, she sounds terrified. She sounds like a little kid. 'Hey.' She shakes his shoulder a little and he groans. She gets her hands on his shoulders and manages to slowly push him upright using her arms to brace him. It's hard going because he's too weak even to balance and she feels guilty for even making him move, but the idea of him passing out makes her panic.

This is when she sees that the patch of gauze taped over his wound is completely soaked through with blood, which is now dripping down his chest in rivulets.

Her vision goes fuzzy for a second, she's so frightened.

'_Bruce, something's wrong!_' she shouts, because he is white and he's looking at her with watery, unfocussed eyes that already seem half dead; does he even see her? She gets an arm under his back and one under his neck and manages to lower him not-very-gently onto the floor because gravity is only making him lose blood faster and she hears Bruce running up behind her – she hears him swear and he puts his fingers on Clint's neck, checking his pulse –

'Fast and thready,' he says grimly. 'Barton, hey, stay with us here –'

He's staring at the ceiling with half-lidded eyes in a total daze and he doesn't even look like he's feeling anything anymore which is not good – but he moans slightly when Bruce rubs his knuckles against his sternum to invoke a response to pain, and Natasha screws her protocol for dealing with him and reaches out to hold his face in both hands, he can psychoanalyse this to his heart's content later and she will put up with all his half-serious teasing and those loaded gazes that make her heart skip beats if he just won't die –_ just oh God please don't die, please don't die –_

'Where's the fucking medic?' bellows Bruce

She doesn't realize she's saying _please don't die_ out loud until Clint's fingers close around her wrist, tangling into her sleeve. Even with that stoned glaze on his face and his eyes staring at some point above her head, he's mouthing something and she leans down closer to hear it, her hair brushing his face;

'_Don't leave.'_

His voice is so hoarse she can barely understand him, but she does, she does… she feels like she's going to throw up because he doesn't look scared even though he's dying and it's because she's there, she knows it is. She doesn't understand how she became this person for him but it breaks her heart because she is not nearly enough. She left him in here alone because she was angry that he saved her life.

'I won't,' she croaks. She sounds like she's spent the last year of her life screaming.

'Steve, look up the nearest hospital and land!' Bruce shouts, rummaging through a first aid kit. He pulls out wads of gauze and shoves them into her hands, and says – ; 'Keep talking to him, try and keep him awake'; - as he checks syringes and looks for other stuff –

She presses the gauze down on his chest as hard as she can, her eyes burning with tears. This should be hurting him but he isn't crying out.

'Clint, stay awake,' she says shakily. 'Do you hear me? _Stay awake.' _

He's trying, she can tell; his eyes are fluttering shut all the time now but every few seconds it's like a jolt goes through him and he manages to open them again. But he never finds her eyes.

He was supposed to be _fine…_

'Come on, please. I'll do anything you want… just _please _stay awake Clint, come on…'

'_Nearest hospital's four minutes away! I radioed in, we've got their helipad!'_

This doesn't seem real. Just an hour and a half ago they were sitting in an air conditioning vent watching dorky scientists dance and drinking horrible coffee, talking about stupid stuff. She doesn't even remember what they were talking about but it was so hard not to laugh, he had to keep pinching her to make sure she didn't blow their cover. She loved it. She loves being with him. Just twenty minutes ago he was going to be fine and she was angry.

'_Please don't die, please don't die, please don't die…'_

**A/N: Thank you so much to everyone who favourited and followed; and especially thank you to the lovely people who reviewed! Each one makes me happy :)**

**This is essentially the first chapter, and dives right into the action. Obviously the relationship between Clint and Natasha has changed since the prologue, and through flashbacks I will be exploring that. **

**The next update should be expected around this time next week! I hope you enjoyed this one and would love to hear from you.**


	4. A Little Black Dress

_About four years after she's recruited, Natasha and Clint are ordered to represent SHIELD at the funeral of a deceased agent, Charles Prescott, by Fury; it turns out there's a rotating roster for this kind of thing because policy dictates that the friends of the agent don't actually count as representation. _

_They didn't know the guy. Natasha gets the feeling that Fury thinks he's doing them a favour by setting this up – they haven't seen each other in five months, off doing solo missions in different parts of the country, and maybe he feels like he owes them with all the success they've been having, or that they need some kind of incentive to keep performing so well. She doesn't know what to think about that – she's not a child, and she doesn't need to be rewarded with Fury's twisted version of playtime, but she has to admit that the idea of seeing Clint again makes her really, really happy. Even if the idea of Fury predicting that makes her really, really uncomfortable._

_She flies into LA from Sydney, Australia, and he comes from Washington. They're supposed to meet at the airport and she finds him first, craning his neck to see over the crowds. She pretends she doesn't care that he looks nervous and kind of excited, in that barely detectable way that only someone who knows him well can see – and if she feels the same way, it's only because – well, who's she kidding, it's because she missed him (it doesn't mean anything)._

_She makes her way towards him and for once in his life, he doesn't see her until she's way up close, because every now and then she still manages to surprise him – she has a knack for knowing where he'll look and staying out of those spaces, but most of the time he knows her too well for that to work. She gets a kick out of watching him search though; it isn't often the great Hawkeye gets caught without his crosshairs. Eventually their eyes meet and his face breaks into a smile; she can't resist smiling back._

'_Tasha!' he greets her, eyes warm, and they stand in front of each other in the pause where normal people would probably hug, doing a good job of acting like they don't know that, just looking at each other in mutual unspoken pleasure (she never hugs anyone, but for the first time she wishes she was the kind of person who did – just for a second). Instead, he reaches out and tugs on a lock of her wig, a strawberry blonde one with bangs that made her a 23 year old receptionist in a research facility that was hiding their work on a new kind of atomic bomb._

'_Suits you,' he comments, and grins._

'_Thanks,' she grins back. 'Long time no see, Agent.'_

'_Too long,' he says. 'I've been hearing great things about your work, though.'_

'_I'm glad.'_

'_You know me – your biggest fan.'_

_They know all about what the other has been doing – she keeps tabs on him because she owes it to him to know if he's ever in trouble, and she knows from things he's said before that he keeps tabs on her, though he didn't actually say why. She thinks he might still feel responsible for her – she doesn't bring it up because they'd just end up arguing, and yet they never manage to change each other's minds._

_They start walking towards the restrooms – they have to get changed and go straight to the funeral, and then they have a couple of hours to themselves before they ship out to different destinations again, for God knows how long. She can't stop sneaking glances at him – aside from his hair being longer, even curling around his ears, he looks exactly the same and she finds that she's glad and a bit relieved, the same way she always is when they see each other. He's the one thing she counts on not to change._

'_I've got a suit,' he says as they walk, holding up a shopping bag with a look of male pattern revulsion, and then he holds up a different one. 'And I bought you a dress.'_

'_You did?' she asks, astonished, and then balks. 'Please tell me you used company money.'_

'_Company funeral, company outfit,' he agrees, but glances at her sideways. 'Most of it anyway. Consider it a gift.'_

'_Clint…' They don't do gifts – never have, not even for birthdays. She knows he believes in them but she just thinks they're a way to rack up more debt, and she wants to keep the lines between them as solid and unconfused as possible. Especially because whenever she's not looking at him, he's looking at her, and it feels somehow different to the way he always has before. But it's been five months – maybe she's forgotten._

'_Just this once, take it,' he says firmly, and for some reason she knows she should and she nods awkwardly. Then laughs._

'_God, I'm going to look like Betty Boop.'_

'_Give me some credit,' he says, pretending to look insulted. 'We're going to a funeral, Agent Romanoff, not a sock hop.' They're both aware that they're acting far too cheerful for two people about to attend a funeral._

'_Alright, lay it on me,' she sighs, holding out her hands, and he actually looks a bit hesitant as he fishes the dress out of the bag and gives it to her, neatly folded._

_She shakes it out and holds it up. It's beautiful – ink black, a fine type of silk that she recognizes as French, with a low but elegant neckline, sheer fluttery sleeves and a tight bodice that tapers out into a knee length skirt. It's pretty, and pretty is not the quality most people think of when picking her clothes – handlers, for example, always seem to go for sexy, voluptuous, va-va-voom. She realizes she's smiling at it – she's smiling at the dress, and she coughs and looks up, nodding in approval. 'It's great, Clint. Very funeral appropriate attire.' Thank you._

'_Told you,' he says. Clearly trying not to look too happy that she likes it._

_They separate briefly to go and change in the restrooms, but the ladies has a line of about thirty people snaking away from it and when she goes back out to the hallway, she sees him doing the same thing._

'_Massive line,' he explains._

'_Same.'_

'_The funeral's in half an hour, we've got to find somewhere to change...' he looks around and she sees what he's going to say before he says it – his eyes land on the janitor's closet. 'Got it.'_

_She rolls her eyes and follows him in, ignoring the scandalized look of an older couple who walk by and see him tug her in by the wrist in a way that could easily be mistaken for urgency born out of lust rather than time sensitivity._

_They've changed in front of each other before; it's no big deal. They're adults and they're friends and their jobs sometimes rely on being attractive and on discussing the best ways for that attractiveness to be utilized for the good of a mission over comm devices, so they don't need to pretend that they find each other physically revolting for the sake of the friendship or anything. When he peels off his khaki cotton shirt, she watches and her eyes linger on the broad, defined muscles of his chest; the swell of his biceps, and when he smirks at her she just raises her eyebrows. When she unbuttons her blouse, throws it to the ground, steps out of her jeans and takes off her wig, shaking her own hair free and standing in front of him in nothing more than her underwear, she likes very much the fact that he stares even as he rummages in his bag for his clothes. They appreciate that they find each other attractive and she refuses to think that she wants more than just to look; that it might be more than just a body she finds attractive about him. She pretends she can't see hunger in his eyes._

_No, what makes her more nervous is when they put clothes _on.

_She's been an adult for a long time now, and she's been comfortable with sex longer than that. Boys irritate her; she only likes men. She's never gone in for 'cute'. But she finds herself obsessed with the way he loops his belt, adjusts his pants on his hips; he puts on a black button down and she finds it far sexier to watch him do up his buttons, clumsy as a kid with his collar up around his ears, than he was bare chested. She pretends she can't hear his breath hitch when she hikes her dress up from her ankles, over her hips and past her chest, folding her arms through the sleeves and arching her back to zip herself in._

_Five months since they've seen each other and mostly it feels the same, but she's never heard that hitch in his breath before._

_When she's got her shoes on, hair untucked from her dress and neatly swept over one shoulder, she stands opposite him in his suit and they look at each other critically. He grins and gives her a thumbs up – she rolls her eyes, because his tie looks like it was done by a monkey, and steps forward to fix it. _

'_I told you. I have great taste in womens wear,' he says, plucking a loose thread off her shoulder. 'You look fantastic.'_

'_Stop sounding so proud of yourself or I'll start to question why you're so good at picking out my clothes,' she quips, arching an eyebrow._

_They exit the closet dressed in their funeral finery and run to catch a taxi. He holds the door open for her until she gives him a flabbergasted look and he gets in before her, muttering something about 'the age of chivalry really is dead.' They sit in the back of the cab and spend the twenty minute drive adding fuel to a long running argument over Fury's sexual orientation – she swears she's caught him surreptitiously eying Clint's ass during training sessions, but he tells her about a rumour that was going around in the year before she arrived, about a young recruit arriving at his office ten minutes early for a performance review, only to see a red faced Maria Hill un-handcuffing herself from his desk and making like a bat out of hell._

_She always misses him, but whenever they see each other she misses him so bad it literally frightens her, even though he's right in front of her. She's been on back-to-back missions for the past five months, and though she occasionally met with intel officers or spoke with Coulson over the phone, she's really been alone. She can't remember the last time she had a personal conversation with someone that wasn't completely scripted or fake, let alone one as easy and natural and fun as this. She can feel five months' worth of tension – of keeping herself under control and pretending to be someone else, of analysing every facial expression and movement around her, of meetings in the dead of the night and gunfights in places no normal person will ever know exist - melting off her bones; she hears someone laughing, an honest-to-god belly laugh and realizes a second later that it's her. _

_She pretends this – the clothes, the cab, the way they can't stop laughing and she can't stop looking at him – doesn't feel exactly, intensely, horribly like a date._

_~(*A*)~_

_The high of the reunion doesn't last long. The funeral is, to put it lightly, awful. The man's wife is so distraught that she spends the first ten minutes of the service sobbing into her mother's shoulder and then faints from the stress, putting a halt on the ceremony while her family – including her traumatized teenage daughter – try to revive her. She then attempts to give a speech but chokes on her words from crying so hard, and has to be helped back to her seat. Natasha feels sorry for her, but she feels worse for the daughter, who doesn't shed a tear for the whole thing and stands stonily at her mother's side when people file past at the end to give condolences, casting resentful glances at her whenever she wasn't looking. Natasha knows that expression; she understands what the girl is feeling. Displays of emotion like that… they make her uncomfortable, and when they come from someone whose tragedy you share it feels like your sadness means nothing because you don't cry. _

_But that woman will cry herself out and her daughter, she'll be angry about this day for much longer than that._

_Clint and Natasha stand at the back of the church during the service; she sees a few familiar faces, SHIELD members who knew the deceased agent personally and are there as friends. Their job is just to give the family condolences on behalf of SHIELD, offer their help with anything that might come up and express gratitude that this man gave his life in service to them._

_They're the last to go up, and Clint does the talking, because he's better at these things. Which isn't to say they don't make him pretty damn uncomfortable, but he at least manages to inject some genuine sympathy into his voice – Natasha has a tendency to come off kind of unfeeling, even though she doesn't mean to._

'_Ma'am,' he says gravely, when they reach the head of the line, 'I'm Agent Clint Barton and this is Agent Natasha Romanoff – we're so very sorry for your loss.'_

_The wife, Elizabeth, takes one look at them and bursts into tears again. One of the men who has repeatedly been propping her up and looks very much like her brother appears at her side and hustles her away, sending them a filthy look. Clint looks at Natasha helplessly – she shrugs, at a loss._

_The daughter watches them coolly._

'_So you guys are from SHIELD?' she asks, in a tone with which someone might ask 'So, you guys are from Nazi Germany?'_

'_Yes,' Natasha answers. 'We're both really sorry about your father.'_

'_Did you know him?'_

'_I worked with him once,' says Clint, knowing immediately this isn't what she wanted to hear. 'So… no, not really. We're here to make sure that you and your mother… that if you need anything, you know how to contact us. And to make sure that you know how much SHIELD appreciates everything your father did.'_

_The girl looks amused. 'Yeah, that sounds about right. My father spends eleven months out of the year running around the country doing SHIELD's bidding like some pathetic lapdog and when he gets killed, the people they send to comfort his bereaved family don't even know him. I always knew he was a loser.'_

_She finishes with relish in her voice and flounces off, leaving them standing at the front of the church. Clint looks stunned. _

_Natasha's not. The girl's angry; she feels like her father gave everything, including time he owed his family, to an organization that not only got him killed but didn't even know who he was. Never mind that he had friends from work there – Clint and Natasha were the ones who represented SHIELD and it was SHIELD that she wanted to know would remember her father. And they would, but only in the same way they remembered every agent who died – in a general, respectful but impersonal way; as a concept, really, not a person. And that wasn't what this girl wanted._

'_Wow,' Clint breathes._

'_Yeah,' Natasha says dully. She looks around – the church is empty. 'C'mon – let's go.'_

_They start the long walk back to the road, an entire cemetery standing between them and the taxi that's waiting for them on SHIELD money. It's a beautiful day; blue sky, clouds hazing the sun so muted light streams through like butter, and the cemetery is beautiful – one of those old fashioned ones that's nearly full to the brim with ancient statues and carefully designed headstones, enormous oak trees marking quadrants and giving the whole place a serene aura._

_It's wasted on a cemetery, really, this place. She's never understood why the most beautiful places are given to the dead, for the living to mourn in – this could be a park, an outdoor concert hall, something great that people could actually enjoy._

_Dead is dead, and they don't need beauty. _

'_I hate funerals,' Clint says suddenly. His voice breaks the peaceful silence and she looks up at him sideways. _

'_You didn't seem to be dreading it too much at the airport.'_

_He barks with laughter. 'It's not the funeral I was happy about, Natasha.' _

_And she looks away before their eyes can meet, because she just knows he's about to look at her and she doesn't want to see what's in his eyes; she hears him sigh. And because she can't make herself look up again, can't make herself ready for what she's getting the feeling he wants her to be ready for, she does what she can and links her arm through his, a gesture that doesn't quite do – but it's all she has, and they walk arm in arm though her instincts tell her to free herself in case of an attack – always the spy. For him, she can ignore them – for a while._

'_So… why don't you like funerals?' she asks, a weird attempt at normal conversation which gets a deservedly incredulous look._

'_You mean aside from the usual reasons? I don't know, I… it's always sad seeing someone be forgotten, you know.'_

'_I thought the whole point of funerals is that they're not forgotten.' _

'_It's meant to be, yeah, but it never turns out that way. People get turned into saints or martyrs or demons – they're never remembered for what they really are. And afterwards it's like people have done what they've supposed to – they went to the funeral, they can say they remembered, and then they go and forget as fast as they can.'_

'_I won't forget you,' she blurts out, and then she can't believe she said it; she almost claps her hand over her mouth. She feels as surprised as he looks, eyes wide, and she's so embarrassed – this is the most sentimental thing she's ever said, probably, and to the most dangerous person. But the expression on his face, disbelief and happiness and that oh-so-dangerous hope –_

'_I – I'm touched, Nat,' he says softly, and she's staring at the ground as though she wants to drill holes through it with her eyes. _

'_Yeah, well.'_

'_I won't forget you either, you know.'_

'_Oh, sorry Barton, but you're dying first so we don't need to worry about that,' she says, glad for the segue into the more light-hearted, and he complies, mock offended._

'_Are you implying something about my skills, Romanoff? I mean, I am the best archer in the world.'_

'_In the world?' she scoffs. 'I'm sorry, did I miss the world archery competition you won?'_

'_I'm assuming,' he says cockily._

'_Assume your way straight to your grave, my friend.'_

'_Hey, hey,' he says, and his tone turns serious again; he stops in his tracks and she feels dread settle into the pit of her stomach as she's forced to stop and face him. 'In all seriousness –'_

'_Oh God, I never should have said anything –' she groans, attempting to pull her arm away from his, but he doesn't let her. _

'_I want you to promise me something.'_

_She doesn't understand why he has to do this. They haven't seen each other for five months and something's different – she thought it was, but it's not as easy as it used to be. He may look the same, but the way he looks at her is different; where once she had met all his expectations, his best partner and resource, it's like suddenly that isn't enough for him – with every gaze and once-just-friendly gesture, he's looking for more. She'd kill for him and she'd die for him, but she doesn't dare think too closely about what that 'more' might be._

'_It depends what you're asking,' she says, and her voice sounds colder than she wants it to. His eyes harden._

'_You always say you owe me a debt, Natasha, if it comes to it then this is how you can repay me, alright?' It comes out harshly and she realizes she's made a mistake; this is about more than what has changed between them. And it's important to him._

'_Yeah… okay.'_

'_If I die –'he begins - _

'_Clint!' _

'_Come on, look.' He narrows his eyes, calls her out on her refusal to take the possibility seriously, because they have dangerous jobs and they both know they're not going to die of old age. 'If I die, I just want you to promise me that you'll – you know –' he clears his throat, and she sees a flush creep onto his cheeks – Jesus, Barton, you never blush! – 'you said you wouldn't forget me but I really don't want you to, okay? So I want you to come out and visit me sometimes.'_

_She wants to brush this off. For one thing, despite her joke, she has no intention of letting him die before her – she can't protect him forever but she'll be damned if she can't protect him for as long as she's alive._

_For another, she doesn't know if she can do what he's asking. Even if the impossible happens and she fails, and he dies before her – and he better not – she'd be able to go on. She'd do her job, she'd serve her new country, she'd do what she promised to do when he spared her life. But she doesn't know if she'd be able to bring herself to visit his grave. To look down at a rock in the ground with his name on it and know that she should have been able to prevent it – or to even set aside time to think about him. He may hate funerals because they let people get away with forgetting, but that's why she likes them. You spend a morning listening to people rattle off a few key qualities and phrases about the deceased, and then you leave. You move on. You remember them when someone says their name or you go someplace that reminds you of them – you don't seek out memories of a person you can't bring back, because there's nothing you can do and thinking about them only slows you down._

_She's not the grieving kind. She just doesn't see the point._

_But he's obviously waiting for a response – eyes intense and piercing in that way she knows means something is really, really important to him – and she knows none of that will go down well with him, so she stalls, because she doesn't want to hurt his feelings._

'_You – the dead you, you mean. The you in the ground?' she asks slowly._

'_Yeah.'_

'_I – why?' She can't keep the frustration, the edge of apprehension out of her voice, though she wishes she had, because he looks sad at the fact that she can't just say _yes, Clint. Of course I will visit your goddamn grave if you die first.

'_Listen, I didn't mean to have this conversation today,' he says. 'I haven't seen you in ages, I don't want to ruin the one day we have together in – who knows, maybe years, right? But that's why I want you to promise. Since we _are_ talking about it. I don't know what happens after we die, Nat. I know you think there's nothing – but I think there's something, who knows what and maybe I'm wrong, but just in case I'd really like you to come out and visit me sometimes. So if I can see you I'll know you didn't forget about me.'_

_And he waits – with his fucking patient face, trying for her not to look like it isn't killing him that he's practically having to beg, and she knows she has to say yes. Because he_ is_ patient, never-ending-ly so when it comes to her, and he's never let her down._

_And she mentions that debt whenever someone asks about their relationship – why is the Black Widow different with Clint Barton? Why does she refuse to go out with the countless agents who ask her out, but never turns down an invitation from him? Why is she his friend, in the somewhat fucked-up capacity that she's capable of, when she tells anybody else who asks that she doesn't believe in friendship?_

'I owe him a debt.'

_Because she would die for him, and she would kill for him, but that's not what he wants. If she owes him a debt, he wants her to fulfil it by having a drink with him on his birthday and letting him use her nun chucks and putting up with the occasional gesture or moment of closeness that makes her uncomfortable. He wants her to stop being so goddamn afraid and just – let go and be what he wants her to be. He'd never say that, but she can tell – and that's what's changed today, because for some reason he's stopped trying to hide it. She can't do it, though. She'll never be brave enough to do it._

_So she'll do what she can, and she'll promise him this._

'_I promise.'_

_And like he always has, he takes what she can give, for a little while longer._

'_Thanks.'_

_Besides – he's Clint Barton. He's the most resilient person she's ever met, and she's met a lot of them. He's survived gunshot wounds, stabbings, torture, countless injuries and maladies and insanely risky situations – he's called Hawkeye because he can see danger coming a mile away, and never once lets it get close. _

_She doesn't _really_ believe he can die._

_It's the last time she sees him, until ten months later she gets a phone call from Phil Coulson and everything changes._

**A/N: Hi! Thank you so much to everyone who favourited, followed and alerted – it's the best thing a writer can ask for, and to those who reviewed, you have no idea how much I love you. They keep me motivated and it's the best feeling when someone takes the time to comment on your stuff, whether it's praise, criticism, whatever – it means people are reading and it makes a huge difference, so thank you!**

**This chapter was a flashback and obviously doesn't progress the narrative, but I hope it gives you some insight into the characters, especially considering where the plot is going – and a present time chapter will be up within a few days, because I want to get it moving.**

**I have quite a few flashbacks written, and some ideas I haven't developed yet – but I would love to know if there's anything hinted at in the story so far which you would particularly like to see, or even a certain aspect of their relationship – please let me know!**


	5. Breath Intermittent

He stops opening his eyes.

The longest four minutes of Natasha's life are the four minutes it takes from that moment to when they touch down on the helipad of New York Mercy. She holds his hand as Bruce does what he can with a half-stocked first aid kit, and she tries not to see the desperation on his face, because he's a doctor and the fact that he's scared is a fact she just can't deal with - she can't let herself think about what that means, because she is trying to hope, even as Clint's hand doesn't move in hers and he doesn't answer her strange new voice when she calls his name. His wound is like a flat red flower opening on his chest, and impossibly it keeps growing bigger, a poisonous terrible weed. There is blood in the corner of his mouth and she gets rid of it gently with her sleeve, barely able to steady her hand.

'How's he doing?' yells Steve from the cockpit.

Bruce glances up at her before he answers and shouts; 'Hanging in there!'

But the expression on his face when he turns back to Clint is grim and Natasha is winded with dread.

She tries to do that thing Clint does that she always envied – that way he has of just wanting something so badly and believing in it so much that it actually happens, but she doesn't know how to translate her will into reality, even though she is full of it; the will for him to live replaces her blood, her bones, like she's a person made up entirely of want, and this is fine, this is fine. She will never want for anything else if she just gets this.

His face is so white. He looks so peaceful but she knows he doesn't want to die. He is not at peace, he is fighting. He has to be fighting behind the fog that is keeping him from her. She has to believe that there is a part of him that can fight, even as his blood drains away and his strength melts down into nothing.

Even as she stares at his face, it seems impossible that this is real. Even as her blood stings with useless adrenalin, there is a tiny corner of her mind that stubbornly refuses to believe this is actually happening. Like a stupid child.

When they touch down, doctors swarm them and she hears Bruce tell them things she doesn't understand, hears Steve having a hushed conversation with Tony on the phone – she tries to block it out but hears the words 'doesn't look good' and wants to scream. And then she is ripped away from Clint; she chokes on a plea to stay with him, because she can't get in their way; these are the people who are going to save him. But then she remembers; 'Don't leave.' And she promised him.

'Wait!'

They have lifted him onto a gurney; there is an oxygen mask over his face, and they don't even seem to hear her as they start wheeling him away.

'I'm coming with you –' she cries, striding after them. She hears Bruce say; 'Oh, God,' and wants to hit him. He heard her promise.

One of the doctors turns to her as they walk and says; 'Ma'am, we're doing everything we can for your friend but you have to let us work.'

'You don't understand –'

'The best thing you can do for him right now is trust us, ma'am –'

'I'm not going to get in your way, I just have to come with you!'

'That's really not a good idea –'

'I promised him –'

'Ma'am, you have to relax –'

She won't hurt him because he's supposed to be fucking useful, but there are three other people working on Clint and so she grabs this man's collar with both hands and slams him up against the wall, toes dangling several inches off the ground. He looks stunned and frightened and this is good – someone else is scared now.

'Romanoff!'

Steve's horrified voice comes from behind her but she ignores him. She looks at the doctor, who looks like he'll do anything she says just to get out of this situation. So she lets him down and he gives her a cowed nod, and they run off after the people who are taking Clint, who do not protest because she is completely capable of killing them all with her bare hands and they know that now.

She tries to see him, but there are people blocking her view and she pushes back the instinct to remove them because they have work to do. She follows them blindly, numbly, until they are in a whitewashed room and the gurney finally stops and they really begin.

'He's tachycardic –'

'Bullet punctured his lung but there's a lot of unexplained bleeding –'

'Burns, scalpel and clamp please –'

She drowns out the medical jargon – she doesn't know what it means. Clint's heartbeat is zipping a line across a black screen framed with numbers, and with every spike and valley there is a loud beep – she focuses on that because a doctor is forcing a plastic tube down his throat and the fact that they can even do that, that Clint still isn't moving or protesting or even opening his eyes and that they are trying to help him breathe, it all makes her feel sick to her stomach and so she just tries to breathe, even though her lungs don't seem to be working and they tear out of her throat like someone is dragging a rope through it; she counts his heartbeats and wills there to be more and lets the hum of the doctors' voices soak into her, even as they grow faster and more panicked and she sees that they do not look hopeful, not a single one of them, and they keep glancing at her like they need to say something to her and don't know how and the child in her head that was refusing to believe this could happen starts to howl with an awful premonition. And the terrible flower on his chest is mutating, staining the mattress underneath him and it no longer seems possible that it will ever stop.

He doesn't look like himself anymore. He looks like an imitation, a lifeless puppet version of himself. To look at him you would never know his heart and his humour and his bravery and his determination; the stupid laugh he does when he finds himself hilarious and the loud, infectious one he does when somebody else makes him laugh. How he tells people he works so hard at archery because he can't be less than the best, but it's really because he won't let anything happen to the people he cares about. You would never know to look at him now, pale and prone on a gurney with blood sliding over his chest in every direction that he is the strongest person she has ever known and this seems wrong.

The beeping from the heart monitor is getting faster, and Natasha's heart is drumming a crazed, sanity-stripped flurry against her ribcage like the last ditch efforts of an animal dying in a cage_. Please don't die, please don't die… I will do anything for you. I will do anything. Please, please don't die…_

'He's bleeding out –'

'Liz, I need some suction.'

Suddenly the beeping turns into a single note, a drawn out mechanical scream, and Natasha gasps involuntarily, a hand flying to her mouth. She knows what that means –

A doctor grabs a pair of paddles and presses them against two green squares on Clint's chest. He looks at Natasha as he says; 'Charge to one eighty,' and his face is filled with pity and she snarls at him, stepping forward – he can't pity her, Clint is not dead yet –

'Clear.'

Clint's back arches from the electrical charge of the paddles and she thinks it must have worked, but that sound is not stopping, not breaking into beautiful heartbeat notes. One of the doctors starts doing chest compressions.

'Charge to two sixty.'

It happens again, and she feels like her own heart is being shocked, because she still dares to hope and yet that fucking sound will not stop, it will not stop.

'Again.'

'Again.'

'Alright, charge to three sixty, guys.'

She's suddenly aware that a nurse is standing next to her, saying words she doesn't even recognize; ' – exhausting all measures, but unless we can get his heart started again…'

And she knows.

He was dead from the moment she left him in the back of the jet. She shouldn't have done that. _How could she do that to him?_ From the second she left him alone with the medic who mysteriously disappeared, from the second she let herself be angry at him, she damned him. She damned him when she met him. She was supposed to protect him and instead he protected her, and she let this happen, and he's dead.

She can't even feel her own body anymore but she sees the decision in the doctor's face when he realizes what she has, that there is nothing more he can do. When he steps back from Clint with the paddles in his hands, and tells the guy doing compressions that they are done. When the sound of Clint's still heart falls into silence at the press of a button. She sees him walk towards her but even though his mouth is moving, it's like his voice is sucked into a void. Her head is ringing. And yet she knows, separate from hearing him, what he is saying.

'Ma'am, I am very sorry. We tried to stop the bleeding and attempted to restart his heart, but the damage was too severe. He died.'

She knows.

'We'll give you a moment.'

The doctors move slowly away from the bed. Carefully, like they're afraid of it. They slink away with expressions of well-practiced grief and she doesn't have a molecule of room in her head to snarl at them for their insincerity. She lurches unsteadily towards Clint, only fuzzily aware of her own feet. She. Can't. Breathe.

She can see the whites of his glazed, unmoving, unseeing eyes beneath the half closed lids and she swallows her tears, reaching out with a hand that no longer feels like part of her body; she tries to be gentle as she passes her fingers over his eyes, as gentle as if he were sleeping and she was trying not to wake him; but his eyelashes tickle her palm and she feels the smooth, still-warm skin of his eyelids under her hand and she wants to throw up with the guilt of being so rough with him; of Clint's eyes not fluttering open, Clint not sitting up with a start and yelling 'What the hell, Natasha?' She simultaneously cannot bear to see his eyes and cannot bear not seeing them; it all feels like a swollen rock in her heart, a pain that builds in her throat and here she is, standing like a fool over the man she loves more than anything in the world with a hand still hovering over his face, an awful reminder of all the times she failed to make the right gesture or be what he needed her to be or even just fucking admit to him that she cared.

The tube is still down his throat, distorting his lips and shakily she reaches over and pulls it out, letting his mouth fall closed with a click of his teeth. It's so wrong. Clint would be awake by now. He wakes at anything; the sound of breathing even. How can he not wake at a tube scraping the inside of his body; at Natasha moving next to him? He's too full of life for this. _Why isn't he moving? Ohgodohgodohgod…._

She gulps back her tears and stares at him helplessly; she wants, she wants. Wants so badly for him to be alive but that can never be again, she has wasted her time with him and this is her punishment, to look down at his body and know that if it weren't for her, he might be somewhere else, heart still beating, smiling maybe or even with another woman, someone who could let him know he was loved. This is her fault.

She takes his limp hand in hers, already cooling in death, and tries to rub some warmth back into it; his fingers slip uselessly in hers and she stops, feeling like a torturer. He must be so cold; his lips are tinged blue, his chest bare. Suddenly she knows what she wants to do, what must be done, and as with no time to spare she climbs onto the gurney beside him and lies at his side, still clutching his big rough hand and using her other to hug his chest, her body and legs pressed against his side; her head fits perfectly into the hollow of his neck and shoulder and his head lolls towards her in a heartbreaking shadow of the way she had imagined he might move if they were together like this; his cheek hits her forehead and stops dead and she squeezes her eyes shut against the tears. She pretends she can feel his heartbeat under her hand where it rests on the lingering warmth. She pretends there is no blood.

She has seen death, she knows death. She doesn't fear death and she never has. But this is not death. This is something more and she doesn't understand how everyone else seems to be mistaking it for the same thing. This has no word, because it's him.

Her breathing slows; she wishes she could get it to match his. She doesn't think. Eyes closed, she traces the scars on his chest; the tick shaped indent under his left ribs from schrapnel. The long, thin gash winding from a spot near his navel down towards his hip, from a knife fight. Bullet scars, one just under his right arm and the other on his shoulder. She knows them even though she's never dared to touch them before; she's ashamed it took her so long. She presses her fingers down on each old wound, wishing she could magic them away. The terrible spot on his chest which will never become a scar, she doesn't touch, because it seems impossible that it won't hurt him.

It's not like she's never touched him, never performed crazy surgery on him in a shit-fight before. But she never told him how much she hated that he got hurt all the time. She called him an idiot and she told him not to be a baby and she did what she had to, to keep him alive. But it's only now she realizes that wasn't enough, not by a long shot. She should have held him like this. He wanted her to; she's so, so sure of it. Not during a battle, but after – he deserved to know that she saved him out of more than a sense of duty but because him being alive made her alive too, because that is why she fights.

Why. Why did she never do this.

There's a creaking sound and Natasha buries her face closer into Clint's neck, inhales the scent of his skin, like sweat and gunpowder and something distinctively his. She recognizes the footprints she hears and she doesn't want them. But they come.

She knows the moment they understand because the footprints stop and there are three intakes of breath; horrified. She won't open her eyes. She wishes they'd leave.

'No, no, no…' Tony's voice breaks and she's overwhelmed with a mad sense of… agreement. _No, no, no…_ she repeats the words over and over in her head like a chant, trying to block the intruders out. _No, no, no, no, no, no, no…_ it pounds in her head like her heartbeat does, filling her.

'Jesus Christ…'

Bruce. That goddamned quiet voice of his. _No, no, no…_

Someone takes a couple of steps towards them. Towards her and Clint. She knows the steps because that is her job, even though right now she wants to know nothing. She knows it's Steve and because she knows him, she knows what he means to do and without meaning to words rip themselves from her throat. 'Stay back!'

He stops. Hesitates. 'Natasha…'

'Don't,' she whispers, this time intentionally. She tightens her grip on Clint's hand, trying to make him real for her. 'Don't try and make me leave him.'

'You can't stay here, Natasha.'

'I can do whatever the hell I want.'

There's an ebb of silence and she tries to let herself sink back into the bubble of being with him, but they won't let her, and for some reason their voices make him even less real in her arms and she hates them.

'They have to – they have to move the body. You have to get checked out.'

'Leave. Us. Alone,' she chokes out, no longer able to hold back the tears, and all three of the stupid hero men walk closer. If she didn't have to stay right where she is, she'd kill them all. He wouldn't want them there. But she's not letting go.

'I know you love him.'

_Bruce. The stupid great brute. He knows, does he? Why didn't he tell her? Why didn't he tell him? Who the hell is he to keep that kind of information to himself? How dare he?_

'He wouldn't want you torturing yourself like this. You don't want that for the people you love. And you… he loved you more than anything. You know that.'

'This isn't torture,' she whispers fervently. She's not just talking to them but to him. _This isn't torture, okay? Please don't think that. Please don't think that._

'Natasha.' That's Tony, and his voice is shaking. 'It's no use. This isn't… this isn't helping. Clint is gone.'

It's like a drop of blood in a bowl of milk. The word. Gone.

She realizes that she's cold. That she is not warming him up like she meant to, but that he is making her cold. She's shivering.

He's so still.

Hesitantly, slowly, she opens her eyes. She sees him, lying still. But she also sees the blinding brightness of the hospital room; the bits of useless equipment, tubing and clothes lying around like dead animals. She has no energy but she makes herself turn her head to look at the three standing in the room. Gathered around the bed. Tony is white faced, eyes wide like he's in shock; pulled out of whatever he was doing tonight and into a nightmare. Bruce's cheeks are wet, his hand running manically through his hair. Steve stares at her. Heartbroken for Clint, but bizarrely, it seems, more concerned about her.

'Natasha,' Steve says quietly, taking another step. 'Please.'

She hates them, because they have made him a body.

Slowly, she starts to move. Slides her arm off his chest, untangles her leg from his, and then, wobbly, she raises herself up onto one arm, staring down at her friend. His head, no longer supported by hers, drops to the side and with pain slicing her chest, she reaches up and runs her fingers through his short, brownish blonde hair. She does it a few times, and then, breathing harshly, she bends over him and presses her lips against his forehead; once on each cheek; and then she holds his beautiful face in both hands and kisses him on the lips. It is the first time.

She tries to pour everything she has never said and never can say into that kiss but his lips are icy and she chokes on a sob and she can't bear to ruin it, so she tears herself away and practically falls off the bed, her arm caught by Tony, who gently tugs her up and anchors her to his side; she lets him for just a second, until she feels she can stand and then she moves away. She doesn't want to be touched.

She stumbles away from the bed, past her teammates and towards the door. She fights the urge to turn around and curl herself around him again. She throws the door open and without looking back, takes a deep breath and steps outside like she's going underwater; leaving behind the person who kept her alive.

~(*A*)~

Dr Browning is standing outside room 713 when the girl goes streaking out of it and runs off like she's possessed, almost bowling him over – he doubts she even realized he was there, and he feels a squeeze of sympathy in his chest because she's the one who lost her friend, the government agent: he'd let her friends go in there when they arrived, because when he'd left she looked absolutely beyond-words devastated and no matter what people think it's never good to be alone. Also, one of the men was Tony Stark and when Browning tried to keep them at bay he threatened to set the Hulk on him.

The other men follow her soon after, looking distraught, and he's barely taken a step towards the room – someone needs to clean up the body before it's taken to the morgue – when a stern looking guy with grizzled grey hair and a suit blocks his way.

'Hello,' the man booms, holding out a hand to introduce himself, and Browning shakes it, taken aback.

'Hello, is there anything I can do for you?'

'My name is George Rowdell, I'm an agent with the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division, otherwise known as SHIELD. I'm here to collect the body of Agent Barton.'

He holds up an impressive looking badge. Great. Browning hates dealing with law enforcement – the only thing they care about is cleaning up their messes and ensuring they aren't held accountable for anything; they have absolutely no respect for people's feelings (or hospital protocol). And this guy looks particularly up himself.

'I'm afraid that won't be possible. It's state law that all homicide victims undergo an autopsy.'

'I'm aware of that. I've made arrangements for the autopsy to be performed at a SHIELD facility.'

'Has that been approved by his family?' he asks politely, and the man's eyebrows furrow; clearly not a fan of being questioned.

'He has no family,' Rowdell says dismissively. 'His contract states that in the event of his death, his medical proxy has the authority to claim his body and that is what she has done.'

'Oh – you mean the woman who just left?'

He finds that hard to believe. That woman didn't look like she was in any state to be making arrangements like that. But maybe it's a SHIELD mentality… maybe this is how she deals with grief. Maybe…

'Natasha Romanoff, yes.' The man nods, and there's something about his face… there's an air of affirmation about him, like something has just slid into place – he's almost smug, and Browning is even more sure that there's something weird going on here.

'I just saw Ms Romanoff… she didn't exactly look like she was focussing on things like autopsies and transportation, Agent Rowdell.'

At this, the man steps forward, all traces of professionalism and geniality gone, and Browning realizes that this is not his usual braying sixth street cop. This man will hurt him if he doesn't get his way.

'What are you trying to say?' he asks, and there's nothing menacing about his tone; just a glint of steel in his eyes that says more clearly than words could that if he continues down this path, he is going to regret it.

'I was this man's doctor. I'm just trying to make sure everything is above board here,' he stammers.

'Doctor, I think you may have been watching too many spy movies. I have no ulterior motive here – I'm an employee of SHIELD and a friend of both the deceased and Agent Romanoff. She made a call and it's my responsibility to make sure her wishes are carried out – that's all I'm trying to do.'

The thing is, you don't call a dead friend 'the deceased'. This guy is lying. But his hand slides slowly to his hip, and Browning sees a gun, and makes up his mind.

At the end of the day, this is just his job. He has a wife he can still tolerate most days; he has two daughters he actually kind of likes. He has a new set of golf clubs in the boot of his car and his fiftieth birthday coming up. He doesn't really believe this man has anything to do with Barton or Romanoff or possibly even anything to do with SHIELD. But Barton is dead, through no fault of Browning's – in fact, he did everything he could to save the man's life. And he has a lot to lose.

So he doesn't like it. But even as his gut twists with remorse, he lets this man go into room 713, ushering two other agents in with him. He pretends to forget that they're not meant to let anyone – not even cops – enter emergency rooms with big black trunks like the one that gets carried in there; and he pretends not to notice that when they leave, wheeling out Barton's body in a bag, the hill in the leather where his feet are… moves.

**A/N: Okay, so I am really nervous about this chapter… I tried really hard to get it right. I hope you like it! I'd really love to know if you think I pulled this off, because so far this is the chapter I've worked the hardest on and it's very important to the plot. It's going to raise some questions, too, so I'd love to hear what you're wondering about and what you might have picked up on… :)**

**As usual, a big thank you to all the wonderful people who followed and favourited, and an extra special thank you to the ones who took the time to write me a review – you are lovely and I appreciate it more than you can know :) **

**The next chapter should be up in about a week, so check back!**


	6. Promises

She stumbles out the hospital exit. She doesn't know how she ever could have dismissed grief, or thought it a weakness; grief is rolling through her like poison in her bloodstream, like sickness in a person who always thought they were invincible, and she knows now that it is not something you let happen, because nobody ever would, but something you drown in, something you choke on, are violated by. She feels cold where her body was touching his. She can't get his face out of her mind; the way he looked at her on the jet when he was dying. Unafraid, because she was there and he trusted her. The thought makes her nauseous and a second later she vomits onto the pavement.

'Oh, that poor girl…'

A woman's whisper reaches her and she sees an old couple standing on the street, just looking at her with faces so steeped in sympathy that it is obvious she has been flayed by loss, she is standing bloody and raw and everyone can see her, like a car crash victim staggering around with glass in her hair; she wonders numbly what part of her is signifying heartbreak, if there's some visible claw puncturing her heart, some wound permeating her skin from the inside.

She can't breathe.

And she wants to ask them for help. Like somehow these wise people who love each other can save her because they grew old together, so they know how: they can teach her. Even now there's a part of her that looks at them like a little girl at her parents, sure they can fix anything. She gives them a look of desperation and her eyes meet the woman's. She sees that there is no solution there. Only pity, because this woman knows love and she suspects what Natasha has lost, and she's looking at her like a person watching someone live something they've lived only in nightmares – with horror and empathy and relief that they at least are not that cursed.

~(*A*)~

He's going to have a SHIELD funeral. His family are all scattered to the wind and she knows that as far as the Bartons are concerned, they were all dead to each other a long time ago. There's a big part of her that feels like she should take care of the funeral, because though she fell short of what he deserved, she knew him better than anyone else in the world. But she can't bear to talk about him with funeral planners. With strangers. Not when the thought of him, which runs through her as constantly as blood, makes her want to stop breathing; when the idea of even saying his name when he's no longer around to belong to it, even to their friends, makes her feel sick.

She can't imagine talking about the kinds of flowers he liked or what song should be playing when his body is carried away for the last time; carried away forever, never to come back. She wants the funeral to be everything he deserves but she cannot bear to be responsible for it when she has shown herself to be such a failure in every other facet of his life. She lets Fury do it. She counts on the fact that as the director of an enforcement agency he has practice with these things, and she pretends she can't see the surprise and disappointment on his face when she passes on the job.

Whenever she reaches for something, whether it's her jacket or a door handle or a bottle of vodka – and these days it's usually the vodka – she feels the absence of him. Every time, in _every_ reach, like her body can't believe he isn't there, and it hits her like a punch, bringing tears to her eyes that she doesn't let spill over because she hasn't cried since the hospital and fears that if she starts, she'll never be able to stop. It's like phantom pain; the sight of things hurts, because she can't see him. The loss of him makes every room she is in go dark. Silence weighs down on her like water. Time stretches in front of her, unending, unwanted, horrifying.

Every time she closes her eyes, she sees him dying on the ground, his hand clinging to her wrist. She sees him dead on a gurney. Still.

The first day after he dies, she moves out of Stark Tower and checks into a motel room in downtown New York. Every time during the night that Tony or Bruce or Steve tried to talk to her, offer her a cup of tea or some toast like she's a fucking invalid, or stared at her like they were just waiting for her to collapse, she got the overwhelming urge to kill them. She knows, in a way that she doesn't really feel, that she liked them once, as recently as a few days ago in fact, and killing them would be a bad idea so she removes herself. She turns off her phone but a few hours later it beeps anyway, turned back on by some remote device of Tony's, so she throws a meat cleaver at it and when her landline rings she throws it into the ceiling fan.

She feels empty all the time – literally, physically empty. Like a psychosomatic representation of her heart, which seems to have bottomed out, and her mind, which cannot fathom anything. The only thing she feels is red, a seeping dull anger, a need to strike out without thinking too hard or too much about what she's striking out at – she needs to _do._ What to do – what should she be doing? She spends hours sitting on the end of the stained queen sized bed, numbly running over the options, each as impossible as the next, bumping up against thoughts of him that puncture her heart like bullets into cake, and swerving desperately away; her body tense with the pent up need to – to be _angry_. She can't go outside, walk the streets with all those normal people, look like she has any kind of life to live – if she looks anything at all like she feels, she'll send people reeling out of her way in alarm. A crazy person. She's never been this directionless – it's what makes her so good, right? She feels like a planet torn off its axis; she feels like she isn't even human anymore. She never rests, never stops working, but she can't bring herself to go to SHIELD, can't imagine going on a mission, and besides she has to stay here until the funeral at least.

God, the funeral. Every time she thinks about it it's like a bucket of cold water is tossed over her head, and if she was still capable of appreciating irony she'd realize it's pretty fucking ironic that she's an assassin, or was anyway, and nothing has ever scared her as much as the idea of going to Clint's funeral.

She sits on that bed for hours, until she can't take the sound of her head any longer because it keeps saying the same things and playing the same images and the same memories over and over again. She sits there until the red is threatening to block out everything else and then she gets up and she leaves and walks straight to Stark Tower – logically she knows it takes her about an hour but it feels like five minutes.

She walks straight into the lobby and to the Avengers elevator, pounding her fist against the door.

'_Agent Romanoff,' _Jarvis's voice says politely. _'Welcome back. Shall I alert anyone of your return?'_

'No,' she says curtly. 'Is anyone in the gym?'

'_Not presently, madam.'_

'Then open the elevator and take me there.'

'_Certainly.'_

She needs to punch something.

When she gets there, the place seems cavernous and dark. There are treadmills, spin bikes, weight machines, the boxing ring, but she wants the punching bag. She strides over to the corner where Steve keeps them stacked like bales of hay and she heaves one onto a hook, her muscles screaming but her mind revelling in the movement, the strain, the anger flowing through her veins where before it was locked in her head and she doesn't wait to wrap her hands like a person who cares what happens to them, she just starts punching, and God – _bang – _it doesn't feel good – _bang_ – because nothing will but it feels for the first time in _hours – bang – _though it seems like a hundred years that she's doing what she should be doing – _bang-bang-bang_ – this is as close to mindless as she can get and she never, ever, ever – _bang_ – wants to stop. She doesn't warm up, doesn't start off slow. She hits the bag hard and fast, the sound of her hands striking leather like a drumbeat in the silence – _bang-bang-bang-bang-bang!_ Her arms are in agony, and then her back and her stomach but that's not the kind of energy she's trying to feel, it's the fucking _anger _because behind that is – behind that is the fact that Clint is dead and if she can just keep being angry she will not have to think about it, she can pretend it isn't true –_ bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-BANG-BANG-BANG -_

'Holy – Jesus Christ, Romanoff!'

Steve's panicked voice registers in her mind and she loses a beat – hissing, without even looking at him, she draws her arm back for another punch but his hand closes over her bicep and she reacts – without meaning to a nasty voice in her brain says _finally – _and lightning fast, reaches back, gets her arm hooked around his neck and flips him straight onto his back – he goes without resistance, he's so surprised, and makes a winded _oof _sounds as he hits the bare wooden floor, his face screwed up in pain. She isn't sorry – she's _satisfied._

'I'm fine,' he breathes, as though she'd asked, and in two seconds he's recovered and jumps to his feet, looking concerned. 'Romanoff – what are you doing? Your hands!'

She looks down perfunctorily and notes that her knuckles are all split and smeared with blood; several have started trickling down her wrists. They don't even hurt.

'I'm fine,' she says tersely, and goes to step around him, to start punching again, but he stops her – at first it looks like he's going to grab her arm again but reconsiders, body remembering the unpleasantness.

'We've been trying to call you all day,' he says softly.

'I know. I destroyed my phones.'

'We figured. Tony traced you though, we know where you're staying… why did you leave? You shouldn't be alone right now –'

'Why not?!' she interrupts, glaring at him. 'That's what I'm good at.'

He raises his eyebrows. 'Judging by your hands and your breath, I'm not so sure about that.'

She narrows her eyes, feeling the fury in her blood hone in on the person standing in front of her and she's _glad – _she doesn't care that he's trying to help, that he's being a friend – she _wants _him to provoke her.

'You don't want to test me, Rogers. Not now,' she whispers, taking a step closer to him. She knows her eyes say _Yes I do_. He doesn't flinch.

'Sure I do,' he says calmly. 'You want to take a shot? Take a shot. I'll be easier on your hands and I've been known to heal pretty fast.'

This catches her off guard, and what's more it pisses her off.

'You doing this because I'm a girl?' she asks, and to her horror, her voice cracks. 'Because – because Clint's dead?' A surge of anger floods into her chest and she lets it run through her hands as she shoves Steve in the chest. 'Do you have to be such a fucking _gentleman _all the time?! _I want you to_ _fight me!'_

She's strong, but he's stronger and her shove doesn't move him an inch. His stupid face is filled with compassion.

'I'm doing this because I'm your friend,' he says quietly. 'And I was Clint's –'

'Shut up –' she half-gasps, the sound of his name in another person's voice like a stab to the heart –

' – I was _Clint's friend too _and he'd want me to let you hit me so if that's what you want, _hit me_,' Steve finishes, looking determined.

So she kicks him – draws her knee back and drives her foot straight into his solar plexus. It's not exactly a dirty move but it's not what he was expecting; because he's a super soldier he winces and takes a shaky breath, whereas on a normal person she would have torn a muscle, made something important bleed. He doesn't make a move to fight back though and she finds that hurting him isn't as cathartic as she expected, as violence has always been for her. Clint's face flashes in her head and she can hear his voice like he's standing next to her.

'_Come on, Natasha,' he'd joked once, after she punched out a guy in a bar because Fury refused to clear her for duty after a leg injury. 'You can't solve all your problems by knocking people around.'_

She closes her eyes, tears suddenly stinging them, and takes a deep breath, opening them just in time to see Steve's sympathetic face as he reaches out to her shoulder, but something on her face stops Steve from touching her and it's a good thing because she doesn't know what she would have done if he had but he may not have walked away from it. His hand drops back to his side and his expression turns resigned.

'I'm so sorry, Natasha,' he says, and she knows he is – he's so very, very sorry, she can see it on his face, but she just can't bring herself to care because she's tried hitting him and it didn't help, not even a little bit, and there's nothing else she wants from him. Nothing else he can give.

She forces herself to nod at him, jerking her chin once, and then she walks away.

~(*A*)~

The next day, Fury calls her. Well, he calls the motel, because her cell and her room phone aren't viable options anymore, and he has the concierge bring his own cell phone up to the room in exchange for, she gathers, a signed Ironman T-shirt.

'I know you wanted me to handle it,' he says, 'but I need to ask you a couple of things about the funeral. It's going to be tomorrow.'

'Great,' she says tonelessly, though her stomach is churning. She's sitting on her bed in her underwear with a bottle of vodka. She hasn't slept. Every time she closes her eyes she sees terrible things.

'The service is going to start at eleven, at the White Orchid Cemetery –'

'So he's going to be buried.'

'Well – yes, is that alright?'

'It's perfect.' What difference does it make? Dead is dead.

'Okay…' he says slowly. 'I thought you might like to know what to expect in regards to the ceremony – SHIELD generally conducts them a lot like the mili –'

'Yeah, I'll just let it be a surprise, okay?'

'Sure. Agent Romanoff, is there anything I can –'

'Didn't you say you had something to ask me, Director?'

There's a pause.

'Yeah. The first thing is, we need a photograph and all our database has is the standard personnel mug shot… we thought you might have something a little more appropriate.'

Her mouth goes dry. 'I don't.' She has no photos of him at all. She feels like all the air has been sucked out of the room; her heart misses a beat completely. She doesn't think she's ever even seen a picture of him, and she suddenly realizes she needs one so badly it aches. 'I don't, I – can you send me a copy of the, the one you have? Please?' She can't even think about the fact that there are no pictures of the two of them together, and never can be.

For the first time in the conversation her voice veers away from cold and flat to desperate, and Fury's voice changes in response.

'Of course,' he says quietly. And then, 'The second matter to discuss is that of the eulogy. I think it's only right that you be the one to do it.'

'I can't,' she says quickly, panic rising in her chest. 'Sir, please –'

'I understand that you could not handle organizing Clint Barton's funeral, Romanoff,' he interrupts her, 'and that what's more, you have no interest in what _has _been organized. I understand that because you were the most important person in his life and he was the most important person to you. That is why it is your responsibility to do what no one else can do. He deserves to have a eulogy written by the person who knew him best.'

He's right. It doesn't change the fact that the very idea makes her want to run and never stop running; she can't imagine talking about him like that, about his life, about what he meant. But he deserves it and that is more important than how she feels; it's taken her far too long to learn that lesson.

'I… okay,' she says hoarsely. 'I'll do it.'

~(*A*)~

That day, she spends ten hours sitting on her bed with a piece of paper and a pen. And it's like the language centre of her brain has stopped working; trying to put who he was into words, trying to explain him… she can't think of anything. There are no almost-right words, no phrases that come close to describing him and what he meant to her. All that comes of trying to think of them are memories.

'_For someone who is so good at manipulating people with her words, you really suck at this,' Clint admonishes, shaking his head at her feeble attempt at a letter, and he hands it back to her. 'Try again.'_

_She'd gone to meet him on his return from a mission, and the second he stepped off the helicarrier he starting giving her a hard time. That was the problem with being friends with someone who had once been allowed to give you orders. They never quite get out of the habit._

'_I told you, letters are stupid. If you want to know what I'm up to, ask Coulson.'_

'_Nope, it's beyond that now. I didn't realize how woefully incapable you are of expressing yourself.'_

_She rolls her eyes as he grabs the folded letter back from her just to unfold it with dramatic precision. He clears his throat and reads; 'Hi Clint, I'm still alive right now. On a mission, currently eating pancakes so that gives you an indication of all the danger I'm in. Hope you're well. Natasha.'_

_Read out loud like that, it does sound pretty stupid, but she just raises an eyebrow at him._

'_I want… five hundred words next time. And none of them can be about your gun maintenance routine. Make me feel like I'm there.'_

'_What, incapacitating mercenaries with your thighs in Kenya?'_

'_I could do it if I had to!'_

~(*A*)~

The day of the funeral, she looks inside her suitcase and realizes that the only funeral appropriate attire she owns is a pretty little dress that Clint bought her, in what seems like forever ago. The prettiest dress she's ever owned, and yet she only ever wore it once, to the funeral of a man whose name she doesn't even remember anymore. She has only ever put this dress on once in her life, and it was with Clint watching her from two feet away inside a musty airport janitor's closet, and as she pulls it on it doesn't feel even slightly like the same dress without his eyes on her; his voice telling her she looks _fantastic, _like he invented the word just for her. He picked this dress, at least in part, just for the joy of getting to see her in it and wearing it today feels right because she is trying, in her own little futile way, to honour him. But looking at herself in the dusty motel room mirror, tears come to her eyes because he will never see her in this dress again.

_I never had a chance to wear it for him again, _she tells herself, but the words don't ring true because though they were apart for ten months after that day, they've had weeks since they were reunited and she has had plenty of chances. To wear a dress that he liked or to not pull away when he touched her.

_Don't lie, Natasha. Not now._

Spies remember faces, and she remembers her own reflection as she and Clint ran past the glass doors of the airport to catch a cab. She remembers how happy she had looked and how she had not known she was happy, and only recognizes it now because of the contrast between that girl and the gaunt, blank-eyed face she has now. Because it turns out that as well as she understands the signs of other people, she is cursed to never understand herself until it is too late.

It's twenty past ten when a limousine pulls up outside the motel and Tony, Steve and Bruce step out; she can see them from her window. They're all wearing suits and sombre expressions and for a moment she doesn't know what they're doing here, but then she realizes they've come to pick her up. Or more specifically, to make sure she's coming. A week ago she would have been supremely offended at the notion that they could make her do anything she didn't want to do. Now, she's apathetic, but the notion registers that if she tries to chicken out today they will make her go and they will make her speak and that's a good thing.

A short time later there's a knock on her door and she opens it.

For a moment they just look at her, and she looks at them, and she is overwhelmed with the feeling of Clint not being there and the terrible truth that now, this is what it looks like when the Avengers assemble, and she screws up her face with the effort it takes not to start crying. There's nothing really to be said because they all know that they're sad, and that what Natasha is feeling goes beyond that. So Bruce just says let's go, and they all file down the corridor and then the stairs and out onto the street in complete silence, and Natasha blinks because the world seems bigger somehow, or maybe she's smaller.

They pile into the limousine and for the whole journey to the cemetery, nobody says a word.

There is a distinct air of guilt and she slowly realizes that in one thing at least, they are the same.

They were the Avengers. They were supposed to be there to protect the world when no one else could, but what nobody ever said but they always understood was that it was also their job to protect each other, and losing Clint means they failed. It's no less devastating to them than if they'd lost the world. To Tony and Steve and Bruce – and to Thor too, in abstentia (her heart clenches when she realizes he probably has no idea what has been happening while he was gone) – Clint was not just a colleague. He was a brother in arms. It was a different kind of bond that they had than was normal for people who fought together, and it didn't matter that they hadn't known each other that long. These guys will never forgive themselves for not being able to save Clint and a small horrible part of her is glad, because she will never forgive herself and she's viciously relieved that she's not alone in that.

They arrive at the White Orchid Cemetery. Pretty name, pretty place, and yet there's a cloud of grey that seems to hang over everything and Natasha's heart starts pounding because she can see a long wooden box with black-suited people gathered around it and knows she has to walk over there.

She makes her way over, winding through the gravestones, and catches Fury's eye. It's clear he's been waiting for her because everyone else is already seated, in rows of black draped lawn chairs, and he takes her arm and leads her over to the front row, where five seats remain empty for Fury, the Avengers, and her.

The coffin is piled with flowers, and a large glossy photograph of Clint is propped on it; she stares at it, because this is the photograph Fury is going to send to her and she had wanted so badly for it to give her some kind of connection to him but she closes her eyes because she feels nothing under that paper gaze but bereft. She had expected to feel a draw to the coffin, because Clint is lying in there, but all she sees is a box piled with flowers. It's not him, and the only thing she feels any kind of pull to is the hole in the ground.

'Are you ready?' Fury asks her in a low voice, and without looking at him, she nods, and like magic, a man steps to the front of the congregation and the service begins.

Few words register in Natasha's mind. She feels numb and hazy and exhausted.

'_Natasha.'_

Someone's elbowing her; she turns her head and sees that it's Bruce. He tilts his head towards the man who's been leading the service, and she sees that he's looking at her expectantly; shakily, she rises to her feet.

It's only when she's standing in front of all these people that she realizes just how many have come. There are almost forty SHIELD agents here, and she remembers how Clint had worried they didn't trust him anymore, after Loki. If only he could be here to see just how much they did care.

'I have never really understood the point of funerals.'

Her voice comes out croaky. She has no idea what she's saying; what part of him she can possibly do justice to by talking to these people. So she just keeps opening her mouth and speaking.

'Traditionally, I know they are a way of honouring the person whose death we mourn by celebrating their life. They're… a shout into the void. A promise not to forget someone who was important to us. And it's a promise we don't always keep.'

'_So… why don't you like funerals?'_

'_You mean aside from the usual reasons? I don't know, I… it's always sad seeing someone be forgotten, you know.'_

'Clint hated broken promises. And he never broke one to me. There are some promises you don't say out loud, but they are no less real. He was my best friend.'

Her voice cracks, and she doesn't remember starting to cry but her face feels wet she knows she is.

'And that was a promise he kept every day when he watched my back… walked into battle with me. Had faith in me. It can't always have been easy but he never gave up on me and for that I will always be grateful. I… I made only one promise to him in all our time together.'

'_Listen, I didn't mean to have this conversation today. I haven't seen you in ages, I don't want to ruin the one day we have together in – who knows, maybe years, right? But that's why I want you to promise. Since we are talking about it. I don't know what happens after we die, Nat. I know you think there's nothing – but I think there's something, who knows what and maybe I'm wrong, but just in case I'd really like you to come out and visit me sometimes. So if I can see you I'll know you didn't forget about me.'_

'It was that I wouldn't forget him. I didn't understand why this was so important to him when he asked. It was a long time ago. He wasn't religious but he believed in life after death and he said once that if he could see me after he was gone, he wanted to know that I hadn't forgotten him. And this didn't make sense to me because he wasn't the kind of person to want to drag out grief and he knew… he knew I wouldn't handle it well.'

'But now… I think that he made me promise for me. And that it wasn't him exactly he didn't want me to forget… though I never, ever will…'

She knows how ridiculous it is now that she ever hesitated to promise to visit his grave. That she was ever reluctant to remember him after he was gone. She should have known she would have no choice in the matter.

'… but all the things he taught me. Whenever I think about him… and I am always thinking about him… I am forced to see myself through his eyes, and so remembering him will make me braver. And better. Because Clint saw good in me and I don't think I could ever bear to disappoint him again.'

'There are a lot of things I wish I could change. Things I wish I had said, or done. Things I had chances to do or say that I just never took, and can never get back. But I want to promise him, whether he can hear me or not, that I won't forget. I want to promise that I will bring the people who murdered him to justice. And I want to tell him that I love him. And that I'm sorry.'

**A/N: First order of business; I am so, so sorry about the delay with this chapter, because I said that it would be up in about a week and it's been about triple that time, and I know how frustrating it can be when you have an expectation that something will be up at a certain time and then it's not. The first five chapters went up in quick succession because I was on a bit of a roll – and had a stretch of free time – and then all of a sudden, I found myself struggling a bit as life simultaneously got a bit busier, and the result is this very late chapter. I'm sorry!**

**In future, I think I'm going to say to expect a chapter (on average), about every two to three weeks (though it should be more frequent than that on the whole). I think that's a bit more realistic and that way I won't be breaking any promises; however, if there is a delay again, I promise I am always working on it and I will never abandon this story, so don't panic :)**

**Second order of business: Thank you! I was completely stunned by the reaction to the last chapter – so much positivity, and I am so, so happy that you all liked it. I got the best, sweetest, most encouraging reviews yet and you have no idea how much that means to me, and they really kept me going when I was struggling to write because I knew people were waiting on me :) Thank you, thank you, **_**and thank you.**_

**This chapter is far less action packed than the last and is really a bit of Natasha grieving/depressed stuff, with the funeral and all; I hope it's okay, I did have some trouble getting it done and I'm not completely happy with it. I'd really like to hear if you think I'm writing her mental processes true to character, because there's a lot of introspective stuff.**

**Next chapter definitely up within two weeks, and that's a promise. Please keep reading! :)**


End file.
